58 Syria govt fighters killed in IS attacks

The Islamic State group 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 last bastions, a monitor said yesterday.

Most of Thursday's dead came south of the desert town of Sukhna, 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, the first such intervention in nearly a year.

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 Sukhna area from the west, the Observatory said.

IRAQ ATTACKS HAWIJA

Iraqi forces yesterday launched an assault on the northern town of Hawija, one of the last bastions in the country still held by the Islamic State group.

"A huge military operation has begun to liberate Hawija and its surrounding areas," the operation's commander, Lieutenant General Abdel Amir Yarallah, said in a statement.

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.