Senior jihadi commander says rebel forces have taken control of eastern Syria’s Deir Ezzor

Insurgents who overthrew the Syrian government now say they have wrested control of the eastern city of Deir Ezzor after intense battles with a Kurdish-led, US-backed force.

Hassan Abdul-Ghani, a senior commander of the jihadi group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — which leads the insurgent alliance, says that the rebel forces completely took control of Deir Ezzor.

A member HTS says in a recorded video that the group will soon conduct a thorough sweep of the city’s neighborhoods to secure the area, adding that the strategic nearby town of Boukamal has also fallen to opposition forces.

“We will advance toward Raqqa and Hasakah and other areas in eastern Syria,” the HTS fighters says.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces had only held the city for a few days. The SDF said it deployed to Deir Ezzor and west of the Euphrates River on Friday, replacing Syrian government forces. At the time, the SDF said its fighters were not in control of the Boukamal border crossing with Iraq, which Israel has struck numerous times over the years to thwart arms transfers to Iran-linked groups.