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Deir el-Zour

US-Backed Troops Hunt for ISIS Leaders at Syria/Iraq Border

U.S.-backed and led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), are trying to locate the key leaders of the Islamic State that are hiding along the Syria-Iraq border. The SDF along with the coalition has an ongoing operation to clear ISIS from the last of their Syrian strongholds.

The U.S.-backed operation, code-named al-Jazeera Storm, was launched last week to remove IS from the rest of the territory it still controls in Deir el-Zour province in eastern Syria.

The forces say the area contains hundreds of IS remnants and key leaders, foreign and local, who took shelter in the vast desert terrain border area after surviving the intense battles in Mosul and the self-proclaimed capital Raqqa.

“Powerful military figures of IS, including international terrorists, are hiding in the region,” said Abu Khawla, the commander of Deir el-Zour Military Council.

He said the fate of the IS leaders will be either “capture or death” as the militants face a siege from the Iraqi army and allied Shiite militias on the Iraqi side and an advancing U.S.-backed operation on the Syrian side.

The U.S.-backed SDF in the past weeks has caught several IS leaders in Deir el-Zour as it closed in on the group. Last month, the force announced it detained German militant and the suspected September 11 recruiter Mohammed Haydar Zammar in northern Syria.

Abu Adil, a member of SDF’s counterterrorism unit who took part in the operation to capture Zammar, told VOA that the fighter was hiding in a compound in eastern Deir el-Zour which was surrounded during a raid that took several hours. “He surrendered to us after about one hour of negotiation,” said Adil.

The U.S.-led coalition and local partners have been targeting IS senior personnel in Iraq and Syria since 2014 to disrupt the organization’s structure and ability to recruit and train members. The coalition airstrikes in 2016 killed the IS spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani and IS chief commander Abu Omar al-Shishani.

Also included in the ISIS top leaders reportedly in the area is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the world’s most wanted man, with a $25 million bounty on his head. He’s been reported to have been killed several times since 2007, but thus far, there is no proof he’s been killed.

To read the entire article from the Stars and Stripes, click here:

File photo of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi giving a sermon in Iraq

US Backed SDF, Syrian Army Advance on Deir el-Zour

With both the Syrian Army and the US backed SDF militias advancing on the city of Deir el-Zour held by Islamic State fighters, the U.S.-led coalition has said they are says monitoring the Syrians to ensure they do not cross a deconfliction zone established across the city.

“We do monitor and watch where they are and where they are going at the same time as they move closer to the middle of the Euphrates Valley,” Colonel Ryan Dillon, spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition against IS, told VOA on Thursday.

Dillon added that the coalition warplanes were continuing to strike IS positions in Deir el-Zour as the U.S-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) partnered with local tribal militias in preparation for an attack from the northeast of the deconfliction line.

The deconfliction zone in Deir el-Zour was established between the U.S. and Russia in late 2015 to separate their areas of operation in Syria and prevent inadvertent clashes between the two sides.

The vast line starts from the town of Tabqa, roughly 45 kilometers west of IS’s self-proclaimed capital, Raqqa, and extends parallel to the Euphrates River that runs across Deir el-Zour toward Al-Bukamal town bordering Iraq. It has divided Deir el-Zour province and city into two parts; SDF operates north and east of the line, and the Syrian government troops and their allied militias are in the west and south.

Earlier last week, the Syrian army moved into the western part of the city where Islamic State fighters still hold pockets of resistance inside. There are some estimated 2500-armed fighters in the province that is rich with oil. The province is one of the IS’ last remaining IS strongholds in Syria and stretches to the Iraqi border.

More than a million civilians live in the area of Deir el-Zour and with attacks by the Syrian army, supported by Iranian-backed Shiite militias and Russian airstrikes against the IS fighters, concern for civilian casualties remains high.

The upcoming battle for the city is expected to be a long, drawn out affair.

To read the entire article from The Voice of America, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia