Syrian troops and militia fought
fierce battles with Islamic State fighters in Syria's northeast
overnight, a group monitoring the war said on Wednesday, as both
sides vie for control of territory near the Iraqi frontier.
The battles took place near a prison just south of Hasaka
city after Islamic State set off a bomb close by, the
British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The surrounding Hasaka province, the country's northeastern
triangle bordering on Turkey and Iraq, is a strategic area
because it links up Islamic State-held land in Syria and Iraq.
The province is mainly populated by Syrian Kurds, whose own
forces have also fought heavy battles against the al Qaeda
offshoot across northern Syria. The Kurds say they do not
coordinate their operations with the Syrian military but have
worked with U.S.-led air forces bombing Islamic State.
The United States and its allies have launched 10 air
strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq and five in Syria
since Monday morning, the U.S. military said on Tuesday.
The five strikes in Syria were concentrated near Hasaka and
Kobani further to west, and hit tactical units, fighting
positions, a command and control facility and a weapons cache,
it said.
The Observatory, which collects its information from a
network of sources on the ground, said around 30 fighters from
the Syrian military and allied militia had been killed in five
days of battles with Islamic State in Hasaka province.
State news agency SANA said late on Tuesday that the army
had "eliminated" a large number of Islamic State fighters in the
Hasaka countryside and foiled an attack on military outposts in
rural areas in the east and southwest.
Clashes led to "dozens of members of Daesh being killed and
wounded and the destruction of the terrorists' vehicles, weapons
and ammunition," it said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic
State.
Steady advances by insurgents on key fronts in Syria have
increased military pressure on President Bashar al-Assad, whose
government increasingly sees western areas near the capital and
the coast as its priority in the four-year-old conflict.
REUTERS