Syrian troops and militia retook the desert town of Al-Qaryatain from the Islamic State group on Saturday ending a three-week-long fightback by the jihadists, state media said. It was the latest in a string of reverses for IS in Syria this month that on Tuesday saw US-backed forces capture its emblematic bastion Raqqa.
The jihadists had seized Al-Qaryatain on October 1 in a surprise counteroffensive against the Homs province town which they had lost to Russian-backed government forces in April last year. "Units of the Syrian Arab Army in cooperation with allied forces have restored security and stability in the town of Al-Qaryatain after eliminating the Daesh terrorists," the state SANA news agency reported, using an Arabic acronym for IS.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor of the war, said that more than 200 jihadists had pulled out of the town during the night, withdrawing into the vast desert that stretches all the way to the Iraqi border. There was no immediate word on the fate of the town's residents during IS's three-week reoccupation. Al-Qaryatain was a symbol of religious coexistence before the civil war broke out in 2011, with some 900 Christians among its population of 30,000.
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