Fierce fighting in Syria and Iraq as besieged IS defends its last bastions

Iraqi forces on Friday launched an assault on the northern town of Hawija, one of the last bastions still held by the Islamic State group in the country, the operation’s commander said.

Meanwhile IS killed at least 58 Syrian government troops and militia as the jihadists put up fierce resistance to a Russian-backed offensive against some of its final holdouts in that country, a monitor said.

In Iraq Lieutenant General Abdel Amir Yarallah said “A huge military operation has begun to liberate Hawija and its surrounding areas.”

Iraqi forces began an operation to retake the jihadist enclave around Hawija on September 21, swiftly taking the town of Sharqat on its second day before pushing on towards Hawija itself.

Yarallah said that Friday’s assault marked the second phase of the operation and aimed to recapture Hawija and the towns of Al-Abbasi, Riyadh and Rashad to its west, east and south.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi hailed the second phase of the operation to recapture the area. “As we promised the sons of our country, we are going to liberate every inch of Iraqi land and crush the Daesh (IS) terrorist gangs,” Abadi said.

The Hawija enclave is one of just two areas of Iraq still held by IS, along with a stretch of the Euphrates Valley near the border with Syria.

All are mainly Sunni Arab towns that have long been bastions of insurgency and were bypassed by government forces in their push north on second city Mosul last year which culminated in the jihadists’ defeat in their most emblematic stronghold this July.

In Syria most of Thursday’s dead came south of the desert town of Sukna, east of the ancient city of Palmyra, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

IS put out a statement claiming to have killed scores of regime fighters in the area and also released what it said was an audio recording of its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi urging resistance, his first in months.

Syrian troops pushed through the vast desert that separates the main cities of the west from the Euphrates Valley this summer and broke a three-year IS siege of government enclaves in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor earlier this month.

Thursday’s attacks targeted government forces around Deir Ezzor and on their supply lines through the Sukna area from the west, the Observatory said.

“The first attacks were carried out against checkpoints manned by loyalist troops in Al-Shula,” a village near Deir Ezzor, the Britain-based monitoring group said.

“IS then carried out a series of attacks against checkpoints along the length of the motorway from Al-Shula to south of Sukna.”

The attacks by the jihadists came as they face multiple offensives against the last bastions of their self-proclaimed caliphate — by US-backed fighters and Russian-backed government forces in Syria and by troops and paramilitaries in Iraq.