Beirut: Daesh terrorists attacked a military airport in Syria’s Homs province on Monday as they pushed on with an offensive against government strongholds towards the west, a monitoring group said.
Skirmishes by Daesh — which is strongest in the northeast and east — into the provinces of Hama, Homs and even Damascus pose a fresh challenge for Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.
Syria’s army has carved a bulwark of territory from Damascus through the cities of Homs and Hama to the western coast by defeating other, less powerful militias including rebels fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the violence through a network of sources in the country, said Daesh attacked a military airport in Tadmur, a town in Homs province, early on Monday.
Syrian officials could not immediately be reached for comment, and the fighting was not reported on state media.
The offensive followed a three-day battle that erupted on Friday further west in Hama around Shaikh Hilal village, the Observatory said. Daesh was trying to cut the road from Hama to Aleppo, once Syria’s most populous city, it added.
Observatory head Rami Abdul Rahman, said 74 soldiers in Hama had been killed by Daesh, which he speculated launched both attacks to raise morale after losses to Kurdish forces in the northeast.
Around 200,000 people have been killed since 2011 in Syria’s civil war, which pits Al Assad against a range of rebels including terrorist groups such as Daesh and Al Qaida’s Nusra Front. A US-led coalition is bombarding Daesh in both Syria and Iraq.
Kurdish forces, backed by coalition air strikes, defeated Daesh in the northern Syria town of Kobani this year and other areas in the northeast.
Abdul Rahman said that the push westwards will raise morale as the US-led coalition is unlikely to fly so close to government-controlled areas, allowing Daesh to advance unhindered.
The vast majority of coalition attacks have been far from army-controlled areas.
Government supporters posted a video on YouTube on Saturday showing trucks covered in the national flag carrying coffins of people said to have been killed fighting Daesh in Hama province.
The footage was said to be taken in Salamiyah, a religiously-diverse town east of Hama that has been attacked by militant brigades.
A Daesh terrorist said on condition of anonymity that the Hama campaign aimed to eventually take Salamiyah. “The ultimate goal is liberate Salamiya and Hama but it will not happen before Daesh is 100 per cent ready,” he said.
