Syria army enters Raqqa as Kurds advance from north

Lightning advance brings Assad forces into ISIL stronghold for the first time in two years.

The Syrian Democratic Forces take prisoners after advancing against ISIL in the southern rural area of Manbij in Aleppo province last week. Rodi Said / Reuters

BEIRUT // Syrian troops backed by Russian air support entered the ISIL-held Raqqa province on Saturday for the first time in almost two years as US -backed Kurdish-led fighters advanced from the north in a bid to trap the militants in a pincer movement.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights said the lightning advance from the south-west with Russian air support brought the army to within 40 kilometres of Tabqa, the town in the Euphrates valley which is the site of the country’s biggest dam and the Lake Assad reservoir, named after Hafez Assad, the late father of Syria’s president Bashar Al Assad. The assault was carried out by regular Syrian army troops reinforced by militia newly-trained by Russia, said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman. Kurdish-led forces also launched an offensive late last month targeting the dam, which lies 50 kilometres upstream of Raqqa, ISIL’s de facto capital in Syria.

He added that the twin offensives raise suspicions that in coordinating operations by their respective allies in Syria, Moscow and Washington are secretly working together. “It seems there has been an undeclared coordination between Washington and Moscow,” he said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov discussed Syria with US Secretary of State John Kerry in a telephone call on Saturday. Although no details of their conversation were released, earlier this week Mr Lavrov said that “more direct, effective and forceful measures” against ISIL and Al Qaeda’s Syria branch Jabhat Al Nusra were Moscow’s “main priority” whereas Western powers were unwilling to target Al Nusra because of its alliances with “moderate” rebels.

At least 26 extremists and nine government troops and militia were killed in the Syrian army advance, according to the Observatory, which relies on reports from medics and activists on the ground.

When ISIL overran the area in 2014, it summarily executed 160 captured regime troops. But now it is ISIL facing ejection with counter-attacks on multiple fronts.

Arab and Kurdish fighters backed by Washington have launched an assault on the strategic Manbij pocket further up the Euphrates in northern Syria on the Turkish border. The region, a key entry point for foreign recruits, supplies and funds, has been fiercely-contested throughout Syria’s five-year civil war and is currently controlled by a myriad of rival armed groups. A large swathe of the border between north-east Syria and Turkey and another border enclave in the north-west is under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces, which Washington regards as the most effective fighting force on the ground against ISIL.

The extremists have tried to enlarge their control of territory on the Turkish border but US has deployed more than 200 special forces to assist the SDF and said they had captured more than 100 square kilometres. Washington also carried out ammunition drops to rebels defending the town of Marea in a bid to stop it falling to ISIL.

American support for the SDF has strained relations with Nato ally Turkey because is largest component are Kurdish. Turkey has endured three decades of insurgency from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Meanwhile hundreds of kilometres downstream on the Euphrates, elite Iraqi troops have launched an assault on Fallujah, another ISIL bastion.

* Agence France-Presse