IS advances to Aleppo; Iranian general killed

Beirut/Ankara, October 9

Islamic State fighters have seized villages close to the northern Syrian city of Aleppo from rival insurgents, a monitoring group said on Friday, despite a Russian air-and-sea campaign that Moscow says has targeted the militant group.

Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps said separately one of its general, Hossein Hamedani, had been killed late on Thursday near Aleppo, once Syria’s most populous city. Hamedani was a veteran of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and was made deputy chief commander of the elite forces in 2005.

Iran, like Russia an ally of President Bashar al-Assad, says it has advisers in the country. The IS is now within 2 km of government-held territory on the northern edge of Aleppo which has suffered widespread damage and disease during the four-year civil war that erupted in the wake of protests against Assad.

Syria’s military, backed by Russia, Iran and militias, has launched a major attack in Syria’s west to recapture land lost to non-IS rebels close to the heartland of Assad’s minority Alawite sect, an area vital to Assad’s survival. As the operation in the west pushed ahead, IS said its fighters had captured five villages in its northern offensive and killed “more than 10 apostates”, a term it uses to describe Syrian soldiers and their militia allies. — Reuters