Baladi - Media
Syrian government forces pressed ahead with their offensive in the country's south on Monday despite threats by the Islamic State group to kill civilians it recently captured there.
Syrian state TV and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition-linked war monitoring group, both reported government attacks on the Yarmouk basin region in southern Syria.
The area is controlled by a group linked to IS that has been in retreat in recent weeks near the border with Jordan and the frontier of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Syrian state TV aired live footage from the area in which troops pounded IS positions with multiple rocket launchers.
The Observatory reported that government helicopter gunships pounded several villages held by IS, including Shajara, Abdeen and Koya.
The Observatory said some 4,000 civilians are still present in the small pocket controlled by IS-linked fighters.
The government-controlled Syrian Central Military Media said that government forces and their allies entered the IS stronghold of Shajara from two fronts on Monday, without giving further details.
The Observatory said the offensive resumed Monday after a day of relative calm following the release of a video on Saturday in which a woman said she was being held with other women. The woman said they could be freed if the government releases IS detainees and halts the offensive. She said if the demands were not met the militants would kill the captives.
The extremists abducted around 18 people, mostly women, in a wave of attacks in the nearby province of Sweida last Wednesday that killed more than 200 people.
Source: Bloomberg