DAMASCUS (Dispatches) – Russia’s Defense Ministry says its aircraft have eliminated more than 200 Daesh terrorists on their way to the eastern Syrian city of Dayr al-Zawr.
The operation also destroyed around 20 SUVs laden with large-caliber weapons and mortars, as well as armored vehicles, including tanks, the Ministry said in a statement on Monday.
The city contains relatively large concentrations of the Takfiri group’s terrorists and is subject to offensives by both the Syrian Army and its allies, and Russian warplanes.
The ministry said the city was now witnessing "international terrorists…trying to regroup and equip their last base in Syria."
"The defeat of ISIS (Daesh) in the Dayr al-Zawr region will be a strategic defeat for the international terrorist group in the Syrian Arab Republic,” the statement said.
Earlier in the month, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said if the group lost the city, it would potentially mean it had suffered an ultimate defeat.
"This is perhaps the main point at the Euphrates, which will in many ways indicate the end of the fight against ISIS,” he said.
Dayr al-Zawr, however, still contains some 125,000 civilians, a fact that could slow down the military operations targeting the city.

125 Civilians Killed in U.S. Strikes

In another development, a monitoring group says more than a dozen civilians have lost their lives in a week as the U.S.-led coalition purportedly fighting the Daesh terrorist group conducted a series of aerial assaults in Syria’s terrorist-held northern city of Raqqah.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Monday that 125 civilians, including at least 40 minors and 25 women, had lost their lives in U.S.-led aerial attacks against the city, located about 455 kilometers (283 miles) northeast of the capital Damascus, between August 14 and August 21.
The Britain-based monitoring group added that 27 people, among them seven children and six women, died on Sunday when U.S.-led military aircraft bombarded Harah al-Badou and other neighborhoods in Raqqah.
The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, in two separate letters sent to UN Secretary General Antَnio Guterres and rotating President of the UN Security Council Amr Abdellatif Aboulatta on August 17, called on the United Nations to take on its responsibilities concerning the establishment of international peace and security to put an end to the U.S.-led coalition’s crimes against innocent Syrians.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry also accused the U.S.-led coalition of using guided bombs and internationally-banned white phosphorus munitions in flagrant violation of international law and human rights principles.
The U.S.-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be Daesh targets inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate.
The military alliance has repeatedly been accused of targeting and killing civilians. It has also been largely incapable of fulfilling its declared aim of destroying Daesh.