ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Fighting resulted in at least 30 deaths from the Syrian regime in eastern Syria’s largest city of Deir ez-Zor, as ISIS attempted to secure territory and a military airport on Saturday.
Waves of ISIS suicide attackers armed with rockets killed at least 30 Syrian army soldiers, militants and civilians, the US government-funded Voice of America news reported.
"Daesh is amassing its forces to attack Deir ez-Zor and breach government lines," a Syrian military source told AFP, referring to ISIS.
The source claimed that fighters had attempted to cut the route between the Syrian government’s airfield and the ISIS-controlled city, but that a government counter-attack had stopped ISIS.
A military source in the city told the government-backed Syrian Arab News Agency reported that Russian and Syrian jets were also launching nonstop airstrikes.
Deir ez-Zor lies on a highway that connects Raqqa, Syria, with Ramadi, Iraq.
The Combined Joint Task Force, the formal name of the anti-to ISIS coalition, announced two strikes near Deir ez-Zor for Friday which destroyed three oil wellheads.
Elissa Slotkin, the US Assistant Secretary of Defense, was asked about the Syria-Iraq border as ISIS is cleared out of Mosul, the group’s last stronghold in Iraq.
“Well, I mean, all you do is look at a map … where is ISIL?” Slotkin responded in a Pentagon press briefing on Friday. “They are in western Iraq and that border needs to be reestablished.”
Russia, Turkey and Iran are set to broker peace negotiations between Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian government and opposing factions in Astana on Jan. 23, although the negotiators are yet to formally announce which opposition groupings have been invited. Previous ceasefires did not apply to the targeting of ISIS.
