DAMASCUS (Dispatches) – U.S.-backed militants joined takfiri terrorists against Syrian forces in northeastern Syria early on Tuesday, both sides said, opening a new front for the Arab country which is fighting back a sudden onslaught on Aleppo last week.
Airstrikes also targeted resistance groups supporting Syrian forces in the strategically vital region, a security source in eastern Syria and a Syrian army source said.
The sources both blamed the airstrikes on the U.S.-led military coalition which illegally operates in Syria and has a detachment of American troops on the ground.
An Israeli airstrike on a car near Syria’s capital Damascus on Tuesday martyred Salman Jumaa, a senior Hezbollah figure responsible for liaising with the Syrian army, a Lebanese security source told Reuters.
The Israeli military confirmed in a later statement what it called an intelligence-based strike in Damascus.
The fighting with U.S.-backed terrorists around a cluster of villages across the Euphrates river from regional capital Dayr al-Zawr complicates the military picture for Syria, whose forces were focused overnight on staunching a renewed terrorist assault near Hama.
Residents of Aleppo said there were already shortages in the city days after the takfiri onslaught. Photographs showed long, chaotic queues for bread. “There’s no bread. The ovens are closed. The queues are getting longer,” said Muhammad Taha, 35.
Fuel supplies were also restricted and petrol station owner Muhammad Aatro said taxi drivers had hiked their prices in response. “We’re coming to winter and most of the gas stations aren’t working,” he said.
The heaviest fighting on Monday and Tuesday was along the frontline just north of Hama, another major Syrian city, where several villages have changed hands
repeatedly over recent days.
Russian warplanes have intensified airstrikes against terrorists alongside Syrian jets over recent days. Syrian state media reported Syrian and Russian strikes in the northern Hama countryside.
On Monday, the Syrian military seized back of the highway linking the cities of Mahardeh and Suqaylabiyah near Hama, and all its adjacent towns and villages, including Karnaz, Tal Malah, Jalamah, Jabbin, Hayalin, and Sheikh Hadid. They also retook several other towns that had temporarily fallen under takfiri control.
Any sustained escalation in Syria risks further destabilizing a region already alight from wars in Gaza and Lebanon, where a truce between Israel and Hezbollah took effect last week.
The SDF terrorists, an umbrella group which controls territory in Syria’s east with U.S. support, said early on Tuesday that its Dayr al-Zawr group had occupied seven villages previously held by the Syrian army.
Syrian state media reported that the army and allied forces were repelling an SDF assault on the villages, the only Syrian government presence along the east bank of the Euphrates river, an area otherwise mostly held by the SDF.
A Syrian military officer said the SDF push was aimed at exploiting the pressure on government forces after the takfiri advance, and said the army and allied groups were sending reinforcements.
Turkey says the SDF’s main fighting force, the YPG, are Kurdish separatists it regards as terrorists, and sent troops across the frontier in 2017 to push them back.
Takfiri advances in recent days have dislodged the YPG from areas it still held in and near Aleppo, including Aleppo’s Sheikh Maqsoud district and a corridor around Tel Refaat to the north.
The SDF presence in northeastern Syria along much of the border with Iraq also complicates supply lines for Syrian forces. On Monday, hundreds of Iraqi resistance fighters had crossed the border into Syria to help government forces.
On Tuesday, major Iraqi anti-terror group Kata’ib Hezbollah urged Baghdad to send troops to Syria to support the Damascus government against the takfiri terrorists.
“We believe the Iraqi government should take the initiative to send regular military forces in coordination with the Syrian government, as these groups pose a threat to Iraq’s national security and the region,” it said.
The occupying regime of Israel has also regularly struck army and resistance forces in Syria.