Syrian troops retreated as regime warplanes bombarded al-Qaeda-led rebel fighters yesterday, a day after the insurgents overran the last government-held city in the key province of Idlib.
Opposition forces now control the vast majority of Idlib after al-Nusra Front, also known as al-Qaeda in Syria, and its allies in the Army of Conquest captured Ariha and surrounding villages on Thursday in a swift assault.
It was the latest blow to loyalist forces who have been battling myriad groups of rebels for four years, after the fall of the ancient city of Palmyra to the Islamic State (IS) extremist group last week.
Photo: Reuters
“The lightning offensive ended with a heavy pullout of regime forces and their allies, Hezbollah, from the western side of the city,” Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman said. “We can’t even say there were real clashes with the government in Ariha.”
The Army of Conquest — Jaish al-Fatah in Arabic — had also seized villages around Ariha as regime warplanes bombarded the city.
The rebel alliance has won a string of victories in Idlib, including the provincial capital, the key town of Jisr al-Shughur, and a massive military base.
Abdel Rahman said the regime was suffering from a serious lack of fighting forces and “could no longer afford any more human losses.”
Meanwhile, in neighboring Iraq, government and allied paramilitary forces pressed an operation aimed at severing supply lines of IS in Anbar Province.
Clashes with IS in nearby Salaheddin left nine dead among the security forces and Hashed al-Shaabi, an umbrella for mostly Shiite militia and volunteers, an army lieutenant colonel and a source at Dujail hospital said on Thursday.
Anti-IS forces continued to close in on Ramadi, the capital of Anbar, which militants captured on May 17, but no offensive to wrest back the city itself had begun.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in a recent BBC interview that IS had been using fleets of huge truck bombs packed with several tonnes of explosives, making it difficult for his troops to enter the city.
Also yesterday, Iraqi officials said at least nine people were killed and dozens wounded when bombs ripped through two upscale Baghdad hotels.
Iraqi Minister of Health Adila Hammoud said the country’s authorities have exhumed the remains of 470 people believed to have been executed by IS near Tikrit last year in what has become known as the Speicher massacre.
“We have exhumed the bodies of 470 Speicher martyrs from burial sites in Tikrit,” Adila Hammoud told reporters in Baghdad.
In June last year, armed men belonging or allied to IS abducted hundreds of young, mostly Shiite recruits from Speicher military base, just outside the city of Tikrit. They were lined up in several locations and executed one by one, as shown in pictures and video footage later released by IS on the Internet.
The highest estimate for the number of people killed is 1,700.
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