73 Syrian regime fighters killed in Daesh attacks

Fighters from Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) sit on the back of a pick-up truck in Raqqa, Syria, in this September 25, 2017 photo. (REUTERS)

BEIRUT: Daesh has killed at least 73 Syrian regime troops and allied fighters in surprise attacks on their positions in a desert region, a monitor said on Friday.
The deaths came in Thursday attacks launched as the terrorist group faces a Russian-backed regime offensive against some of its last bastions. The extremist group claimed the attacks against several positions south of the town of Sukhna in central Homs province, saying its fighters had killed dozens of regime troops.
The attacks come a day after Daesh released what it said was an audio recording of its leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the first in a year, in which he urged resistance.
Regime troops pushed through the vast desert that separates the main cities of the west from the Euphrates Valley this summer, and broke a Daesh siege of nearly three years on regime enclaves in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor earlier this month.
Thursday’s attacks targeted regime forces around Deir Ezzor and their supply lines through the Sukhna area from the west, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
“The first attacks were carried out against checkpoints manned by loyalist troops in Al-Shula,” a village near Deir Ezzor, the Britain-based monitoring group said.
“IS (Daesh) then carried out a series of attacks against checkpoints along the length of the motorway from Al-Shula to south of Sukhna.”
Syrian regime media made no mention of the army’s losses, but said its troops “confronted an attack by the terrorist Daesh group on the highway between Deir Ezzor and Palmyra, deep in the Badia desert.”
State news agency SANA said the army had “inflicted heavy losses on the ranks of the terrorists,” adding that units were “currently working to clear remaining Daesh terrorists from the area and secure the highway for traffic.” The observatory said at least 45 Daesh fighters had been killed in the fighting.
Meanwhile, the US-led coalition fighting Daesh militants has confirmed that another 50 civilians had been killed in strikes in Iraq and Syria, raising the total number of civilians it said it has killed to 735 since the conflict began in 2014.
The coalition said in a statement that during August, it had assessed 185 reports of civilian casualties and found that the additional 50 deaths occurred in 14 incidents that it deemed were credible.