BEIRUT: Fighters from a US-backed, Kurdish-led coalition battled Syrian government forces in northeast Syria early on Tuesday, both sides said, opening a new front for President Bashar al-Assad who lost Aleppo in a sudden rebel advance last week.

The US-led airstrikes also targeted Iran-backed militia groups supporting Syrian government forces in the strategically vital region, a security source in eastern Syria and a Syrian army source said.

The sources both blamed the airstrikes on the US-led military coalition which has a small detachment of American troops on the ground.

The fighting around a cluster of villages across the Euphrates River from regional capital Deir al-Zor complicates the military picture for Syrian President Assad, whose forces were focused overnight on staunching a renewed rebel assault near Hama.

UN decries attacks on civilians; Iraqi PM says won’t remain a spectator in Syria; Erdogan discusses Syria conflict with Putin

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The heaviest fighting on Monday and overnight was along the frontline just north of Hama, another major Syrian city, where several villages have changed hands repeatedly over recent days.

An operations room for the rebel offensive and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitoring group, claimed on Tuesday rebels had again captured those villages.

Crowded battlefield

A return of fighting to northeast Syria, where the United States, Russia, Iran and Turkey are all involved, underscores the messy global politics at play in the conflict and the dangers of escalation in a potentially crowded battlefield.

Israel has also regularly struck Iran-backed forces in Syria. Syrian state media reported that an Israeli drone had targeted a vehicle near Damascus.

UN decries attacks on civilians

The United Nations raised the alarm over attacks on civilians and the health system in northwest Syria where surging hostilities have killed hundreds and pushed tens of thousands to flee.

The attacks around a lightning offensive by Islamist rebels, who have seized Syria’s second city Aleppo, were deepening the suffering endured by millions in the country after years of civil war, the United Nations rights office said.

‘Iraq won’t be spectator in Syria’

Iraq will not act as a mere spectator in Syria where it believes groups and sects are victims of ethnic cleansing, Iraq’s prime minister said on Tuesday, according to a readout from his office of a phone call to Turkiye’s president.

Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, who discussed the situation in Syria with Turkiye’s President Tayyip Erdogan, said Iraq would exert all efforts to preserve the security of Iraq and Syria, according to the official readout of the call.

“What is happening in Syria today is in the interest of the Zionist entity, which deliberately bombed Syrian army sites in a way that paved the way for terrorist groups to control additional areas in Syria,” the Iraqi prime minister’s office quoted Sudani as saying.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan discussed the renewed outbreak of conflict in Syria with Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone, Erdogan’s office said in a post on X on Tuesday.

Erdogan told Putin that Turkiye supports Syria’s territorial integrity and strives for a just and lasting solution in Syria, the statement said.

“President Erdogan highlighted the importance of making more room for diplomacy in the region, and underscored that the Syrian regime should engage in the political solution process,” it said.

Qatar said that there was no military solution to the Syrian civil war. “The military solution will not lead to a sustainable result,” foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said.

Published in Dawn, December 4th, 2024