Militant group the Islamic State killed 270 soldiers, guards and staff when they captured a Syrian gas field on Thursday in the bloodiest clashes yet between the al-Qaeda offshoot and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, a monitoring group said yesterday.
The anti-al-Assad Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Thursday reported that 90 people had been killed and that many were missing after the attack against the Sha’ar gas field east of Homs, Syria.
The Observatory, which monitors violence in Syria through a network of sources in the country on both sides, quoted what it described as “trusted sources” as saying yesterday that the Islamic State had “killed and executed” 270 people during the assault.
It said at least 40 Islamic State fighters were killed in the offensive.
The Islamic State has made rapid gains in Syria, mostly by seizing territory from rival rebel groups, using weaponry brought in from Iraq, where last month it managed to take large areas from government forces.
It was not immediately possible to verify the report. Syrian state media made no mention of the attack.
About 30 people had managed to escape to the nearby Hajjar field, the Observatory report added.
Activists say the Syrian air force has in recent weeks stepped up attacks on positions held by the militant group, formerly known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
The Islamic State had previously taken control of oilfields in Iraq, as well as in Syria’s eastern Deir al-Zor Province. The group was once the Iraqi affiliate of al-Qaeda, but al-Qaeda disowned it in February after tensions mounted over its expansion into Syria.
The Islamic State has declared a “caliphate” in the areas where it operates in Iraq and Syria, which include Raqqa, Syria, and Mosul, Iraq.
The Observatory says more than 170,000 people have been killed in Syria’s conflict, which started as a peaceful protest movement in 2011, but descended into a multifaceted civil war after a government crackdown.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS