‘Daesh Has Seized 700 Hostages in Syria’

Date: 19 October 2018 - 21:12

News ID: ۵۸۶۶۲

SOCHI, Russia (Dispatches) – President Vladimir Putin says Daesh terrorists have seized nearly 700 hostages in part of Syria controlled by U.S.-backed forces and had executed some of them and promised to kill more.
Speaking in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, Putin said the hostages included several U.S. and European nationals, adding that the Daesh was expanding its control in territory on the left bank of the River Euphrates controlled by U.S. and U.S.-backed forces.
Putin did not specify what the terrorists’ demands were.
"They have issued ultimatums, specific demands and warned that if these ultimatums are not met they will execute 10 people every day. The day before yesterday they executed 10 people,” Putin told the Valdai discussion forum in Sochi on Thursday.
The TASS news agency reported on Wednesday that Daesh terrorists had taken around 700 hostages in Syria’s Dayr al-Zawr province after attacking a refugee camp in an area controlled by U.S.-backed forces on Oct. 13.
TASS said the terrorists had kidnapped around 130 families and taken them to the city of Hajin.
The U.S., along with a coalition of its allies, has been conducting airstrikes inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate. It has repeatedly been accused of targeting Syrian civilians and infrastructure.
On the contrary, Russia has been providing the Syrian army with both advisory and on-the-ground assistance in its counter-terrorism battles. Thanks to that help, Syrian armed forces have managed to liberate most of their homeland from the clutches of terrorists.
Putin further said Russia, unlike the U.S., had dealt a "heavy blow” to terrorists in Syria, eliminating many of them and forcing others to surrender their arms to advancing Syrian government troops.
"Over these years, we liberated almost 95 percent of the Syrian Republic’s territory,” he said, adding, "We maintained its sovereignty and did not let [the Syrian] state fall apart.”
Putin further stressed that Russia’s counter-terrorism actions in Syria – which come at the request of the legitimate government in Damascus -- helped "stabilize the situation in the region.”
The mid-northern parts of Syria are under the control of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-dominated alliance of militants receiving arms and training from the U.S.

A member of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) looks on near the rubble of a damaged site in the northern Syrian city of Raqqah, September 25, 2018.