Tag Archives: ISIS

U.S. says Islamic State committed genocide against Christians

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Islamic State has committed genocide against Christians, Yazidis and Shi’ite Muslims, the United States said on Thursday, a finding U.S. officials hope will bring more resources to help the groups even though it does not change U.S. military strategy or legal obligations.

“In my judgment, Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yazidis, Christians and Shi’ite Muslims,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters, referring to the group by an Arabic acronym. “Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by actions.”

Republicans, who control the U.S. Congress, had pressured the Democratic White House to call the militants’ atrocities in Iraq and Syria genocide and the House of Representatives on Monday passed a nonbinding resolution 393-0 labeling them as such.

U.S. officials hope the determination will help them win political and budget support from Congress and other nations to help the targeted groups return home if and when Islamic State-controlled areas such as the Iraqi city of Mosul are liberated.

While the genocide finding may make it easier for Washington to argue for greater action against the group, U.S. officials said it does not create a U.S. legal obligation to do more, and would not change U.S. military strategy toward the militants.

On Wednesday, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said: “Acknowledging that genocide or crimes against humanity have taken place in another country would not necessarily result in any particular legal obligation for the United States.”

U.S. President Barack Obama ordered air strikes against the group starting in 2014 but has made clear he wishes to avoid any large commitment of U.S. ground troops.

Unlike in Rwanda in 1994 and Darfur in 2004, where the United States found that genocide had taken place but did not use military force to stop it, U.S. officials noted they began air strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq in August 2014 in part to save the Yazidi minority group from targeted attack.

“We didn’t act in Rwanda. We looked back and regretted it. We didn’t act militarily in Darfur. In this case within … days of the Yazidis being targeted by Daesh in Iraq, American planes were in the air trying to help them,” said a senior U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

‘WE’VE DONE AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT’

Islamic State militants have swept through Iraq and Syria in recent years, seizing swathes of territory with an eye toward establishing jihadism in the heart of the Arab world.

The group’s videos depict the violent deaths of people who stand in its way. Opponents have been beheaded, shot dead, blown up with fuses attached to their necks and drowned in cages in swimming pools, with underwater cameras capturing their agony.

Kerry argued the United States has done much to fight the group since 2014, but did not directly answer a question on why it had not done more to prevent genocide.

“We’re very confident we’ve done an enormous amount,” he told reporters as he walked down a hall at the State Department.

“The fact is that Daesh kills Christians because they are Christians. Yazidis because they are Yazidis. Shi’ites because they are Shi’ites,” Kerry said earlier, and accused Islamic State of crimes against humanity and of ethnic cleansing.

Islamic State militants have exploited the five-year civil war in Syria to seize areas in that country and in neighboring Iraq, though U.S. officials say their air strikes have markedly reduced the territory the group controls.

On-again, off-again peace talks got under way this week in Geneva in an effort to end the civil war, in which at least 250,000 people have died and millions have fled their homes. A fragile “cessation of hostilities” has reduced, but not ended, the violence over the last two weeks.

(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Kerry to miss deadline for decision on whether ISIS atrocities are genocide

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will not have a decision on whether atrocities committed by Islamic State constitute genocide by a March 17 deadline set by Congress, but he should have a decision soon, the State Department said on Wednesday.

“We are informing Congress today that we’re not going to make that deadline,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner told a news briefing.

“We certainly respect the deadlines that Congress lays down on specific reports, or in this case decisions about genocide,” he said. “However, we also take the process very seriously. And so if we need additional time … in order to reach a more fact-based, evidence-based decision, we’re going to … ask for extra time.”

(Reporting by Arshad Mohammed and David Alexander; Editing by Eric Beech)

Algerian named as dead Brussels gunman, manhunt goes on

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Belgian prosecutors on Wednesday named a 35-year-old Algerian as the man shot dead by police on Tuesday during a police raid on a Brussels apartment in the hunt for clues to bloody attacks in Paris last November.

Police found an Islamic State flag in the apartment used by Mohamed Belkaid and two others suspected of being with him after officers were met with a barrage of automatic weapons fire as they arrived to search the flat.

Belkaid, who was living in Belgium illegally and had a police record for theft but was not on security watchlists, was killed by a special forces sniper after a three-hour siege. A manhunt for the two other suspects continued on Wednesday.

The government held its alert status steady at Level Three, one step below the maximum.

The prosecutors said a radical Islamic text was found next to Belkaid’s body and a cache of ammunition was also discovered. It was not clear if he had any links to the Paris suspects.

Two people detained overnight on suspicion of links to the shootout in the suburb of Forest were released without charge.

Investigators believe much of the planning and preparation for the Nov. 13 shooting and bombing rampage in Paris that killed 130 people was conducted in Brussels by young French and Belgian nationals, some of whom fought as militants in Syria.

Ten people are being held in Belgian custody on a variety of charges relating to the four-month investigation, though prime suspects, including Salah Abdeslam, a brother of one of the Paris suicide bombers, are suspected of having fled the country.

SHOOTOUT

On Tuesday, six Belgian and French police officers arrived to search the flat and came under automatic fire through a door from at least two people barricaded inside. Four officers, one of them a Frenchwoman, were wounded, none very seriously.

Ministers said the police visit to the apartment had not been expected to provide much new evidence and that the presence of French officers did not imply a major break in the case.

Prime Minister Charles Michel said he was holding the state of alert steady after a meeting of security and intelligence chiefs in Belgium’s national security council .

Brussels, headquarters of the European Union as well as Western military alliance NATO, was entirely locked down for days shortly after the Paris attacks because of fears of a major incident there. The city has maintained a high state of security alert since then, with military patrols a regular occurrence.

Belgium, with a Muslim population of about 5 percent among its 11 million people, has Europe’s highest rate of citizens joining Islamist militants in Syria.

People living in the quiet neighborhood of Forest suffered hours of lockdown on Tuesday and voiced shock at the events.

Schoolboy Maxime, 11, was at home sick when he heard gunfire and helicopters and saw masked commandoes on a rooftop. “They had a huge weapon,” he said, adding he was “very, very scared”.

(Additional reporting by Miranda Alexander-Webber; Editing by Alastair Macdonald and Tom Heneghan)

Iraqi commander sees Islamic State retrenching before Mosul battle

MAKHMOUR, Iraq (Reuters) – Islamic State is retrenching as Iraqi forces build up for an operation to retake the northern city of Mosul and some local militants desert the group, the commander in charge of the highly anticipated offensive said.

Thousands of Iraqi troops have deployed to the north with heavy weapons in recent weeks, setting up base alongside U.S. forces and troops from Iraq’s Kurdish autonomous region in Makhmour — a launchpad around 60 kilometers south of Mosul.

Although he described Islamic State as depleted, Nineveh Operations Commander Major General Najm al-Jubbouri said jockeying between the various forces preparing to take part in the battle for Mosul benefited the militants.

“The operation to liberate Nineveh will be done in stages,” Jubbouri said, referring to the province of which Mosul is capital. “Now we are more or less just waiting for the order of the commander in chief to begin the first step.”

Mosul, home to around two million people before it fell to Islamic State during a lightning offensive in 2014, is by far the biggest city ruled by the jihadist group in either Iraq or Syria. An Iraqi offensive to recapture it, backed by air strikes and advisors from a U.S.-led coalition, would be the biggest counterattack ever mounted against the group.

Kurdish and Iraqi military sources say the initial move will be westwards from Makhmour to the town of Qayyara on the Tigris River, which would sever Islamic State’s main artery between Mosul and territory it controls further south and east.

Jubbouri said the timing would hinge on the progress of military operations in the valley of Iraq’s other great river, the Euphrates, where Iraqi forces have been advancing against the militants after routing them from a provincial capital, Ramadi, in December.

The U.S.-led coalition bombing Islamic State hopes Mosul will be recaptured this year, dealing a decisive blow to the militant group. But many question whether the Iraqi army, which partially collapsed when the militants overran a third of the country in June 2014, will be ready in time.

“NO WAY FOR THEM”

As Iraqi forces push up towards Mosul, Jubbouri said he did not expect to encounter much resistance because people in the villages south of the city were fed up with the militants and are likely to rise up against them.

Already, Islamic State has withdrawn from certain villages, he said: “They have begun to abandon some areas and concentrate their presence near Mosul because they know there is no way for them.”

Citing intelligence, Jubbouri said there were 6,000-8,000 militants in Nineveh province, of which the majority were local Iraqis motivated less by belief in Islamic State’s ultra-hardline creed than the material benefits of siding with the militants.

“For that reason, many have begun to leave the organization and the battlefield. We know the foreign fighters are the ones who will fight fiercely, and also the Iraqis whose hands are stained with the blood of other Iraqis.”

In Mosul itself, Jubbouri expected street fighting and said the main challenge was the presence of more than one million people who would be used as human shields by the militants.

When Islamic State conquered Mosul, many residents welcomed them as liberators from a heavy-handed army, but Jubbouri estimated that between 70-75 percent of the population would now support the security forces.

“The rest are either hesitant or scared, and a part are embroiled (with Islamic State) in a big way.”

Rivalry between different factions who want to take part in the offensive and secure influence in Mosul poses another challenge, Jubbouri said.

The involvement of Shi’ite militias is a subject of controversy because they have been accused of abuses against Sunnis in other areas recaptured from the militants.

Turkey has also deployed troops to a base north of Mosul where they are training a militia formed by the former governor of the province, while Kurdish security forces known as peshmerga will play a support role.

“What is necessary is for all efforts now to be combined,” Jubbouri said. “We must put aside our egos and differences and keep our eyes on the goal: to liberate the city.”

(Reporting and writing by Isabel Coles; editing by Peter Graff)

Islamic State fighter from U.S. in custody in Iraq

ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) – An American fighting for Islamic State was taken into custody in northern Iraq after he left territory controlled by the militant group, according to two Kurdish officers, one of whom arrested him.

Both said it appeared the man was intending to escape both Islamic State and Kurdish forces but handed himself in after peshmerga fighters opened fire on him near the frontline in the village of Golat.

Captain Daham Khalaf said they had spotted the fighter hiding in long grass around dawn and waited until the sun rose before surrounding him: “He shouted ‘I am a foreigner’,” Khalaf said, describing him as bearded and dressed in black.

The fighter did not have a passport but was carrying an American driving license and spoke English and broken Arabic, according to General Hashim Sitei who spoke to him.

A copy of what was said to be the license, seen by Reuters, was in the name of Khweis Mohammed Jamal.

“We gave him food and treated him with respect and handed him over to military intelligence,” said Sitei.

The fighter was unarmed but carrying three mobile phones and said his father was Palestinian and his mother was from the Mosul area in Iraq, both officers said.

The State Department said it was aware of the reports that a U.S. citizen said to have been fighting for Islamic State was captured by Kurdish peshmerga forces in northern Iraq.

The address on the driver’s license confiscated by the peshmerga was for a residence in a townhouse complex in the Washington, DC, suburb of Alexandria, Virginia.

As about a dozen reporters and television crewmembers waited outside, a black Lincoln Town Car drove up. Two men stepped out and angrily demanded that the media leave.

The older man – who identified himself as Jamal Khweis – grabbed a photographer’s camera as the younger man pushed at the lenses of several television cameras. At one point, the older man sprayed the reporters with a garden hose.

The man confirmed that he has a son the same age as the American captured by the peshmerga. He said he didn’t know where his son was, but that he would “never go” to Iraq.

“He is my son. He is a good person,” he said.

More than 250 Americans have joined or tried to fight with the extremist group in Syria and Iraq since 2011, according to a September 2015 bipartisan congressional taskforce report.

At least 80 men and women have been charged by federal prosecutors for connections to Islamic State, and 27 have been convicted.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Landay, Kat Jackson, Doina Chiacu and Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Louise Ireland and James Dalgleish)

Italian engineers need two months on Mosul dam before starting repairs

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Italian engineers hired to help prevent a catastrophic collapse of Iraq’s largest hydro-electric dam will need at least two months to assess the structure before starting major maintenance work, a Water Resources Ministry spokesman told Reuters.

Mahdi Rasheed Mahdi said it might be six months before work began on the Mosul dam as Italy’s Trevi Group needed to bring in specialist equipment to plug gaps caused by erosion.

The dam, near the northern city of Mosul, was built in the 1980s on a friable gypsum layer on the Tigris and needs constant repairs to avoid disaster.

Maintenance work was disrupted for two weeks in August 2014 when the dam was captured by Islamic State militants seeking to carve a caliphate in captured territory in Iraq and Syria.

The dam’s seizure prompted concerns that irreparable damage to the structure’s foundations may have been caused. Collapse would devastate Mosul and other cities along the river, including the Iraqi capital Baghdad, and cause hundreds of thousands of casualties.

“They need two to six months and this was a request by the company,” Mahdi said by telephone. “The company needs time to import their equipment and this definitely takes time. We have already anticipated this.”

Mahdi said there was no imminent threat of collapse as some maintenance work was being carried out but more was needed to stabilize the structure. The Trevi contract would not provide a permanent solution, he added.

The dam was retaken by Kurdish Peshmerga fighters with the help of U.S.-led coalition air strikes, and Iraq signed a $300 million, 18-month deal with Trevi to reinforce and maintain the 2.2 miles structure.

Italy has said it planned to send 450 troops to protect the dam, which is close to territory held by Islamic State fighters.

(Reporting by Saif Hameed, writing by Maher Chmaytelli)

Border attack feeds Tunisia fears of Libya jihadist spillover

TUNIS/ALGIERS (Reuters) – The signal to attack came from the mosque, sending dozens of Islamist fighters storming through the Tunisian town of Ben Guerdan to hit army and police posts in street battles that lit the dawn sky with tracer bullets.

Militants used a megaphone to chant “God is Great,” and reassure residents they were Islamic State, there to save the town near the Libyan border from the “tyrant” army. Most were Tunisians themselves, with local accents, and even some familiar faces, officials and witnesses to Monday’s attack said.

Hours later, 36 militants were dead, along with 12 soldiers and seven civilians, in an assault authorities described as an attempt by Islamic State to carve out terrain in Tunisia.

Whether Islamic State aimed to hold territory as they have in Iraq, Syria and Libya, or intended only to dent Tunisia’s already battered security, is unclear and the group has yet to officially claim the attack.

But as fuller details of the Ben Guerdan fighting emerge, the incident highlights the risk Tunisia faces from home-grown jihadists drawn to Iraq, Syria and Libya, and who have threatened to bring their war back home.

Despite Tunisian forces’ preparations to confront returning fighters, and their defeat of militants in Ben Guerdan, Monday’s assault shows how the country is vulnerable to violence spilling over from Libya as Islamic State expands there.

Authorities are still investigating the Ben Guerdan attack. But most of the militants appear to have been already in the town, with a few brought in from Libya. Arms caches were deposited around the city before the assault.

“Most of them were from Ben Guerdan, we know their faces. They knew where to find the house of the counter-terrorist police chief,” one witness, Sabri Ben Saleh, told Reuters. “They were driving round in a car filled with weapons, my neighbors said they knew some of them.”

Troops have killed 14 more militants around Ben Guerdan since Monday. Others have been arrested and more weapons seized.

ISLAMIC STATE

Officials say they are still determining if the militants had been in Libya before or had returned from fighting with Islamic State overseas. But that such a large number of militants and arms were in Tunisia is no surprise.

After its revolt in 2011 to topple Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia has struggled with growing Islamic militancy.

More than 3,000 Tunisians have left to fight with Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, according to government estimates. Tunisian security sources say many are with Islamic State in Libya.

Gunmen trained in Libya were blamed for attacks on tourists at the Bardo Museum in Tunis a year ago and at a beach hotel in Sousse in June.

Tunisians also play a major role in Islamic State in Libya where they run training camps, according to Tunisian security sources.

But the scale of Monday’s attack was unprecedented. The militants were well-organized, handing out weapons to their fighters from a vehicle moving through the city, with knowledge of the town and its military barracks.

“We came across a group of terrorists with their Kalashnikovs, and they told us: ‘Don’t worry we are not here to target you. We are the Islamic State and we are here for the tyrants in the army,'” said Hassein Taba, a local resident.

The attack tests Tunisia at a difficult time. After Islamic State violence last year, the tourism industry that represents 7 percent of the economy is struggling to tempt visitors to return.

With its new constitution, free elections and secular history, Tunisia is a target for jihadists looking to upset a young democracy just five years after the overthrow of dictator Ben Ali.

“The battle of Ben Guerdane in Tunisia, 20 miles from the Libyan border … is proof enough that the Islamic State has cells far and wide,” said Geoff Porter, at North Africa Risk Consulting. “But what these cells can reliably do … and how they are directed by Islamic State leadership in Sirte, let alone in Iraq and Syria, is not known.”

AIR STRIKES

Islamic State has grown in Libya over the past year and half, coopting local fighters, battling with rivals and taking over the town of Sirte, now its main base.

That has worried Tunisian authorities, who have built a border trench and tightened controls along nearly 200-km (125 miles) of the frontier with Libya.

Western military experts are training Tunisians to protect a porous border where smuggling has been a long tradition. Ben Guerdan is well-known as a smuggling town.

“There are still some blind spots in intelligence, but they are advancing with the cooperation of neighboring countries and with the West,” said Ali Zarmdini, a Tunisian military analyst.

But Tunisia’s North African neighbors worry about the spill over impact of any further Western air strikes and military action against Islamic State in Libya.

After a U.S. air strike killed 40 mostly Tunisian militants in the Libyan town of Sabratha last month, Tunisian forces went on alert for any cross-border incursions.

Just days before the Ben Guerdan attack, Tunisian troops killed five militants who tried to cross from Libya.

But the fact that even after that setback, militants mustered a force of 50 fighters to strike the town shows the group’s ability to keep testing the Tunisian military.

(Writing by Patrick Markey; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Turkish warplanes strike northern Iraq after Ankara bombing kills 37

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish warplanes struck against Kurdish militant camps in northern Iraq on Monday after 37 people were killed in an Ankara car bombing that security officials said involved a female fighter of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Sunday’s attack, tearing through a crowded transport hub a few hundred yards from the Justice and Interior Ministries, was the second such strike at the administrative heart of the Turkish capital in under a month.

Security officials told Reuters a female member of the outlawed PKK, which has fought a three-decade insurgency for Kurdish autonomy in Turkey’s southeast, was one of two suspected perpetrators. A police source said her severed hand had been found 300 meters from the blast site.

Evidence had been obtained that suggested she was born in 1992, was from the eastern city of Kars near the Armenian border, and had joined the militant group in 2013, they said.

Violence has spiraled in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast since a 2-1/2 year ceasefire with the PKK collapsed in July. The militants have so far largely focused their strikes on security forces in southeastern towns, many of which have been under curfew.

But attacks in Ankara and in Istanbul over the last year, and the activity of Islamic State as well as Kurdish fighters, have raised concerns among NATO allies who see Turkey’s stability as vital to containing violence in neighboring Syria and Iraq. President Tayyip Erdogan is also eager to dispel any notion he is struggling to maintain security.

“With the power of our state and wisdom of our people, we will dig up the roots of this terror network which targets our unity and peace,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Twitter.

The Turkish military said 11 warplanes carried out air strikes on 18 targets in northern Iraq early on Monday, including ammunition depots and shelters. The PKK has its bases in the mountains of northern Iraq, controlling operations across the frontier in Turkey.

A round-the-clock curfew was declared in three southeastern towns in order to conduct operations against Kurdish militants, local officials said. Many locals fled the towns in anticipation of the operations.

Victims of Sunday’s attack included the father of Umut Bulut, a footballer who plays for Turkey and Galatasaray, the Istanbul club said on its website.

WAR IN SYRIA

Turkey’s government sees the unrest in its southeast as closely tied to the war in Syria, where a Kurdish militia has seized territory along the Turkish border as it battles Islamic State militants and rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad.

Ankara fears those gains are stoking Kurdish separatist ambitions at home and says Syrian Kurdish fighters share deep ideological and operational ties with the PKK.

They also complicate relations with the United States which, while deeming the PKK to be a terrorist group, sees the Syrian Kurds as an important ally in battling Islamic State. Such is the complexity and sensitivity of alliances in the region.

The explosives were the same kind as those used in the Feb. 17 attack that killed 29 people, mostly soldiers, and the bomb had been packed with pellets and nails to cause maximum injury and damage, the source told Reuters.

The attack is the third in five months to hit Ankara, a government town dominated by ministries, parliament, embassies and the sprawling armed forces headquarters compounds. More than 100 people were killed in a double suicide bombing in October that has been blamed on Islamic State.

Turkey is part of the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. The militant group has been blamed for at least four bomb attacks on Turkey since June 2015, including the killing of 10 German tourists in Istanbul in January. Local jihadist groups and leftist radicals have also staged attacks.

There was little immediate reaction in financial markets, with the lira only slightly weaker against the dollar. But analysts said the deteriorating security situation was a concern for a country heavily dependent on tourism.

“It is clear that Turkey’s political risk profile is rising gradually and the country is not yet safe for long-term investors,” Atilla Yesilada of Istanbul-based consultancy Global Source Partners said in a note to clients.

The German foreign ministry issued a travel warning for Turkey of potential terrorist attacks.

In its armed campaign, the PKK has historically struck directly at the security forces and says it does not target civilians. A direct claim of responsibility for Sunday’s bombing would indicate a major tactical shift.

The Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK) claimed responsibility for the February bombing. TAK says it has split from the PKK, although experts who study Kurdish militants say the two are affiliated.

(Additional reporting by Asli Kandemir in Istanbul; Writing by Daren Butler and David Dolan; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Ralph Boulton)

Mississippi man pleads guilty to trying to join Islamic State

(Reuters) – A Mississippi man pleaded guilty in federal court on Friday to attempting to join Islamic State in Syria with his wife last summer.

Muhammad Oda Dakhlalla, 23, and Jaelyn Delshaun Young, 20, were arrested at a Mississippi airport in August 2015, while attempting to board a flight to Turkey, where they believed an Islamic State contact would convey them to Syria, according to court documents filed by U.S. prosecutors.

Young, who has not pleaded guilty and is scheduled to go to trial in June, acknowledged her role as the “planner of the expedition” in an incriminating farewell letter, the documents said.

Dakhlalla entered his guilty plea in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, in Greenville.

In exchange for Dakhlalla’s guilty plea to a single count of conspiring to provide material support to a designated terrorist organization, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, U.S. prosecutors agreed to not press any other charges.

Both Dakhlalla and Young, of Starkville, Mississippi, are U.S. citizens. Young converted to Islam in March 2015, according to the court documents.

Dakhlalla and Young are two of more than 80 individuals whom the United States has charged with Islamic State-related crimes since 2013.

Young’s Twitter posts about her desire to join Islamic State caught the attention of the FBI in May 2015, and an agent posing as an Islamic State recruiter began corresponding with her and Dakhlalla.

The couple, who had married in an Islamic marriage but did not get their marriage legally recognized, were motivated to join the group after viewing Islamic State executions of people they deemed immoral, and because they perceived the group as “liberators” of parts of Syria and Iraq, according to court records.

Attorneys for the couple said in court that when they were first charged, they had no weapons nor military training and would not pose a threat to others if released on bond.

(Reporting by Julia Harte)

Syrian army aims for eastward advance with Palmyra attack

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Syrian army backed by Russian air strikes is aiming to capture the historic city of Palmyra from Islamic State to open a road to the eastern province of Deir al-Zor in an offensive that got under way this week, a source close to the Syrian government said.

The Russian air force has hit Palmyra with dozens of air strikes since Wednesday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group. Syrian government forces were on Friday battling Islamic State some 4 miles from the ancient site that fell to the jihadists last May.

Observatory Director Rami Abdulrahman described it as a large-scale assault, calling it a “real operation to retake control”. The source close to Damascus said the aim was to “seize the road from Tadmur (Palmyra) to Deir al-Zor”.

Islamic State has blown up ancient temples and tombs since capturing Palmyra in what the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO has called a war crime. The city, located at a crossroads in central Syria, is surrounded mostly by desert.

The Islamic State group is not included in a cessation of hostilities agreement that took effect on Feb. 27 and has brought about a lull in fighting between the government and rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad in western Syria.

Since the Russian air force intervened in support of Assad last September, tilting the military balance his way, Western states have criticized Moscow for directing most of its air strikes at rebels in western Syria rather than IS.

The capture of Palmrya and further eastward advances into Islamic State-held Deir al-Zor would mark the most significant Syrian government gain against IS since the start of the Russian intervention. With Russia’s help, Damscus has already taken back some ground from IS, notably east of Aleppo.

ISLAMIC STATE LOSING MOMENTUM

The momentum has turned against Islamic State since its rapid advances two years ago following the capture of the Iraqi city of Mosul. Its finances are also under strain, with fighters’ pay cut by up to a half.

The group’s tactics in Syria appear to reflect the strains, as it turns to suicide missions seemingly aimed at causing maximum casualties rather than sustainable territorial gains.

Russian air power has helped government troops backed on the ground by Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to advance in strategically vital areas of western Syria where fighting has largely subsided due to the truce.

The source close to the Syrian government said the bulk of the forces mobilized for the Palmyra offensive were from the Syrian army. The source, who is non-Syrian but familiar with military events in Syria, was speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Abdulrahman of the Observatory said at least 32 Islamic State fighters were killed on Thursday in the Palmyra area. Syrian military officials could not be reached for comment.

Islamic State is being fought in Syria in two separate campaigns: on the one hand by the Syrian government and its allies, and on the other by a U.S.-led alliance that is working with Syrian groups including the Kurdish YPG militia.

The group captured nearly all of Deir al-Zor province after seizing the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2014. The Syrian government, however, still controls part of the city of Deir al-Zor, which is besieged by Islamic State fighters, and a nearby air base.

(Reporting by Tom Perry, editing by Peter Millership)