Syrian forces liberate 15 villages from Daesh in Aleppo

Syrian government forces, backed by Russian air support, have retaken 15 villages from Daesh terrorists in the country’s northern regions.

According to a military source quoted by the SANA news agency on Saturday, Syrian forces have freed around 90 villages from the hands of Daesh since mid-January.

He added the troops are “expanding control in northeast parts of Aleppo province.”

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the government soldiers had reached areas only 14 kilometers to the Daesh-held town of Khafsah, where Aleppo’s main water pumping station is located.

The head of the UK-based monitoring group, Rami Abdel-Rahman, said that clashes with the terrorists had displaced around 30,000 people.

Abdel-Rahman noted that most of the displaced people have fled towards Manbij, which is under the control of Kurdish forces.

Kurdish forces, mainly the Democratic Union Party (PYD), and its military wing, the YPG, liberated the northern Syrian city of Manbij from Daesh last year.

“The numbers of displaced people here are still rising because of the clashes between the Syrian government and Daesh,” said Ibrahim al-Quftan, the co-chair of Manbij’s civil administration.

The observatory stressed that Manbij is already the host of thousands of displaced people. “This will make it difficult (for local authorities) to welcome a new wave of displaced people, given their inability to tend to their pressing needs,” added Abdel-Rahman.

For nearly six years, Syria has been fighting foreign-sponsored militancy. The UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura estimated in August last year that more than 400,000 people had been killed in the crisis until then. The world body stopped its official casualty count in the war-torn country, citing its inability to verify the figures it received from various sources.