BEIRUT: Syrian government troops and allied forces reached the eastern city of Deir Al Zor on Tuesday, breaching a nearly 3-year Daesh siege on government-held areas of the contested city near the Iraqi border, Syrian state TV and a war monitoring group said.
The TV said troops advancing from the west reached the western outskirts of the city and broke the siege after Daesh defences collapsed.
Breaching the siege on Deir Al Zor, which has been divided between an Daesh and a government-held part since 2015, marks another triumph for President Bashar Al Assad, whose forces have been advancing on several fronts against Daesh and other insurgent groups over the past year.
Rami Abdul Rahman who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said advancing troops and those defending the city have met.
The latest developments mark a strategic and symbolic defeat for Daesh, which last month lost its hold over Iraq’s second largest city of Mosul and is under attack by US-backed Syrian forces in its self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa, northwest of Deir Al Zor.
Syrian troops and allied militiamen, backed by Russia’s air force, have for months been advancing toward Deir Al Zor, the provincial capital of the oil-rich province of the same name. The breach is expected to end a nightmare siege for tens of thousands of people trapped in a handful of neighbourhoods controlled by the government and a nearby airport.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Tuesday that a Russian warship in the Mediterranean fired cruise missiles toward Daesh targets in Deir Al Zor province.
A Russian frigate in the Mediterranean Sea fired the missiles early Tuesday on Daesh targets near the city. The defence ministry said it targeted a fortified area around the town of Al Shola where most of the militants are believed to hail from Russia and former Soviet republics.
The ministry said its drone footage showed that the missile strikes there destroyed a communications centre, command centres, ammunition depots, a repair shop for armoured vehicles and killed an unspecified number of militants.
Tuesday’s breakthrough came after government forces dismantling mines around a besieged government-held airbase known as Brigade 137.
The DeirEzzor 24, an activist group that has reporters throughout the eastern province, reported heavy clashes near the village of Jabra that is adjacent to the besieged area.
Tuesday’s firing of cruise missiles came a day after the Russian defence ministry said two Russian troops were killed in shelling in Syria’s east.
The ministry’s statement quoted by Russian news agencies late on Monday said the two men died when a convoy escorting Russian ceasefire monitoring staff came under mortar fire outside the city of Deir Al Zor.
The ministry said one man died on the spot and the other died later of his wounds in a hospital.
