The heaviest fighting and shelling for months hit Hama province in northern Syria on Friday, a war monitor said, but there were diverging accounts of how the battle started. The clashes were accompanied by heavy bombardment, with dozens of shells and rockets being fired, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, adding that it had confirmed there had been casualties.
The battle is around the village of Maan, 23 km (15 miles) north of Hama in western Syria, near the location of a rebel assault and government counter-offensive this spring. The Observatory said the fighting arose from an attempt by pro-government forces to advance north from Maan into rebel territory.
A military media unit run by the government’s ally Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shi‘ite group, said it was rebels who tried to attack, but were thwarted by the Syrian army. Hardline Islamist groups, including the Tahrir al-Sham alliance which contains al Qaeda’s former Syrian affiliate, are present in the area.
The war front in northern Hama province has mostly been quiet since a de-escalation process, brokered by the government’s ally Russia and rebel backer Turkey took effect in early May. The Syrian army’s main focus since May has been its campaign in the east of the country against Islamic State.
In the same context, Fierce fighting between Syrian government forces and the Islamic State group has killed 64 combatants in Raqqa province over a 24-hour period, a monitoring group said Wednesday. The clashes come with the army pressing an advance through Raqqa, in northern Syria, towards neighbouring Deir Ezzor, the only remaining province of the war-ravaged country still in the hands of IS militants. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitor, said the fighting had claimed the lives of 38 militants and 26 pro-government combatants since Tuesday morning.
On the other hand, The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) on Tuesday claimed responsibility for a pair of suicide bombings in the Syrian capital of Damascus that killed 17 civilians and policemen the previous day.
In bombings, two men attacked a police station in the al-Midan neighborhood with several bombs, before one of them blew himself up, according to Syria's interior minister, Lt. Gen. Mohammad al-Shaar. He said the other bomber made it inside the compound, where police killed him, causing his bomb to explode.
The ISIS' own pseudo-news agency Aamaq said the militant group carried out the al-Midan attack. The statement gave no other details.
The Syrian army, backed by Russia, is at war with ISIS as well as a local al Qaeda affiliate and an array of rebel groups trying to oust President Bashar Assad. The military has been steadily claiming territory from ISIS in central and eastern Syria recently.