Tehran: Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu was meeting with his Syrian and Iranian counterparts on Thursday in Tehran where he said that Moscow was looking at ways to increase its military cooperation with forces supporting Syrian president Bashar Al Assad.

Moscow has sent warplanes and special forces in support of Al Assad’s regime, while Tehran has deployed military advisers, fighters and trained and equipped pro-government militias.

The visit by Syria’s General Fahd Jassem Al Freij comes as the Damascus regime steps up its campaign against Syrian rebel fighters in Aleppo.

Moscow has already pledged to step up its air strikes against rebel forces in and around Aleppo.

Moscow’s military intervention last September has significantly improved the regime’s position.

Meanwhile, a campaign to crush Daesh in Syria and Iraq pressed ahead on Thursday with major advances on multiple fronts that have put some of the greatest pressure on the terrorist group since they declared their so-called caliphate two years ago.

A spokesman for a US-backed alliance in northern Syria said it was poised to enter the city of Manbij, a week after launching an assault with the aim of cutting off the last stretch of Turkish frontier still under Daesh control.

A short distance further west, Syrian rebels pushed Daesh out of an area near the border with Turkey.

In Iraq, government forces said they had fought their way into built-up areas of Fallujah, the second-biggest city in Iraq under Daesh control and the militants’ closest bastion to Baghdad.

The Iraqi government is backed both by US-air power and by the pro-Iranian Shiite militia Hashed Al Shaabi.

Human Rights Watch said Thursday the Iraqi government should hold its forces accountable for what happens in Fallujah.

“It’s high time for Iraqi authorities to unravel the web of culpability underlying the government forces’ repeated outrages against civilians,” a HRW statement said.

HRW said it had conducted interviews corroborating allegations that members of the federal police and the Hashed Al Shaabi executed at least 17 people fleeing the fighting in Sijr, northeast of Fallujah.

The rights watchdog also listed reports of civilians being stabbed to death and others dying after being dragged behind cars in the Saqlawiya area, northwest of Fallujah.

Fallujah, just an hour’s drive from the capital, is in territory where Sunni tribes have long resisted the Shiite-led government in Baghdad and where US forces faced the biggest battles of their own 2003-2011 occupation.

Washington worries that the Iraqi military could become bogged down in hostile territory there, and is also concerned about the role of Shiite militia, whose leaders criticised Al Abadi last week for slowing the advance to protect civilians.

The United Nations said on Wednesday as many as 90,000 civilians could be trapped inside Fallujah, nearly doubling its earlier estimate.