Page 9 - ARUBA TODAY

A9
WORLD NEWS Wednesday 6 september
Syrian forces break long Islamic State siege of eastern city

forces advancing on Deir up.The advance by the Syr- rassment to Assad.Activists
el-Zour, he noted.Iran has ian troops was celebrated noted, however, that the
been seeking to secure a as a possible relief for the new access road could not
land corridor from its ter- tens of thousands of civil- yet be used for delivering
ritory, through Iraq, to the ians trapped in the four humanitarian assistance
Mediterranean to give it government-controlled because it was still under
unhindered access to its neighborhoods that have attack from IS.Deir el-Zour,
allies in Damascus and Bei- been surrounded by the Syria’s largest eastern city,
rut. Control of Deir el-Zour is extremists since 2015. The has been divided into gov-
a major boost for that plan. Syrian government esti- ernment- and IS-controlled
By nightfall, activists said mates about 70,000 peo- parts since 2015. The prov-
the IS militants had coun- ple have survived on er- ince is held by the extrem-
terattacked with four sui- ratic air drops of food and ists and it is where they are
cide assaults near where supplies during the siege, expected to fight their last
the Syrian troops had linked which was a major embar- battles. q
This photo released on Mon-
day, Sept 4, 2017 by the Syrian
official news agency SANA,
shows Syrian troops and pro-
government gunmen stand-
ing on pickup trucks with
heavy machine-guns mount-
ed on them, in the eastern city
of Deir el-Zour, Syria.
(SANA via AP)
By ZEINA KARAM
SARAH EL DEEB
Associated Press
BEIRUT (AP) — Backed by
Russian and Iranian fire-
power, President Bashar
Assad’s forces reached be-
sieged troops Tuesday at a
garrison in Syria’s eastern
city of Deir el-Zour, break-
ing a nearly three-year
blockade by Islamic State
militants and marking a sig-
nificant advance against
the extremists.
Re-entering Deir el-Zour
would bring the Syrian
forces and their allied Ira-
nian-backed militias a step
closer to controlling the oil-
rich eastern province and
its capital bordering Iraq.
Such a move would also
boost Tehran’s growing in-
fluence in the area.Assad
congratulated his troops on
breaking the siege as a “re-
sounding victory” against
extremism and vowed to
forge ahead until “the last
inch” of Syrian territory is
liberated. Russian Presi-
dent Vladimir Putin, whose
military had fired cruise
missiles at IS targets near
the city, called it a “stra-
tegically important victory
over terrorists.”Assad critics
called it an alarming de-
velopment.
“It opens the whole prov-
ince for Iran and its agents
there,” said Mozahem al-
Salloum, an opposition ac-
tivist from the city who has
been in exile since 2013.
Iranian- and Lebanese-
backed militias form the
core of the pro-Assad