Baladi News - Journals
U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces said Sunday it had thwarted a car-bomb attack by Daesh (ISIS) in eastern Deir Ezzor province amid mass displacement for tens of families from battlefield areas.
SDF fighters have been attempting to take Daesh's last Syrian pocket of territory on the banks of the Euphrates for weeks, in an offensive backed by U.S.-led airstrikes; but the radical group has showed stubborn and has advanced in the SDF areas, killing and wounding dozens.
At least 60 U.S.-backed fighters were killed and Daesh took 30 more captive in Deir Ezzor, Amaq news agency said.
The SDF captured a senior Daesh leader who served as an assistant to the group's self-declared "caliph" Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, they said Friday.
The SDF, a Kurdish-led militia alliance that holds the quarter of Syria east of the Euphrates, detained Osama al-Awaid last week, it said in a statement.
They captured Awaid in a special operation in a village in eastern Syria, the statement said, adding that he had been a senior security official for Daesh in the country.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State in eastern Syria this week killed dozens of people in the jihadist group's last major foothold.
The U.S.-led coalition, now in a push to defeat the final remnants of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, has previously said it investigates reports of civilian casualties and does all it can to avoid them.
Source: Zaman al-Wasl.