BEIRUT // Insurgents launched a major offensive on government-held areas in north-western Syria in a bid to advance towards a coastal region vital to president Bashar Al Assad’s control of the west on Tuesday.
The rebels are trying to drive into the Sahl Al Ghab plain, an area crucial to the defence of the coastal mountains that are the heartland of Mr Assad’s Alawite sect.
Meanwhile in Hassakeh province, Syrian troops and Kurdish fighters ousted the ISIL group from Hassakeh city on Tuesday, more than a month after the extremists launched an assault on the north-eastern city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Government troops and Kurdish forces had been battling to purge the extremist forces out of the city since June 25.
Supporters of an insurgent alliance trying to drive into Sahl Al Ghab, the Army of Conquest, said the rebels had seized a power station in the area, which acts as a buffer for government-held cities such as Latakia, west of the plain. They listed a total of 16 places captured from government forces in the offensive.
The UK-based Observatory said insurgents including the Al Qaeda-linked Jabhat Al Nusra captured government-held positions outside the town of Jisr Al Shughour and pushed into the northern tip of the plain overnight.
The insurgents fighting against government forces also included the Ahrar Al Sham faction and groups including Chechen and central Asian fighters, the Observatory said.
Rami Abdel Rahman, who runs the Observatory, said government forces had launched a counter attack and had recovered some lost ground in Sahl Al Ghab.
A Syrian military source, who described the attack as large and widespread, said: “The battles are ongoing in that area between the army and the militant attackers, the terrorists.”
Insurgents including Jabhat Al Nusra captured Jisr Al Shughour in May, in a wider offensive that drove government forces from nearly all the northwestern province of Idlib.
The military has concentrated on defending Syria’s west, a tactic Mr Al Assad alluded to on Sunday when he said the army had been forced to give up some areas in order to hold onto more important ones during the four-year conflict.
Further north, ISIL “was expelled by the army from Zuhur, the last district in which it was present in Hassakeh, and its fighters have been pushed to the southern outskirts of the city,” said Mr Abdel Rahman.
According to him, at least 287 ISIL fighters – among them 26 minors – had been killed in the fight for Hassakeh, as well as strikes by the US-led coalition outside the city.
Another 120 soldiers and pro-regime militiamen and several dozen Kurdish forces were also killed, Mr Abdel Rahman said.
State news agency Sana said Syria’s armed forces “dealt great blows to the Daesh terrorists ... in Zuhur” on Tuesday, but did not say the extremists had been pushed out of Hassakeh city.
“Army units advanced again into Zuhur, where they executed a special operation against the terrorist hotbeds”, it reported.
ISIL has attacked Hassakeh city several times, but the latest assault was the most serious yet.
Its forces initially seized several districts in the southern part of the city, with Kurdish fighters and regime troops mobilising against them.
The Observatory said ISIL had used at least 21 car bombs and several suicide bombers during the month-long campaign.
* Reuters and Agence France-Presse
