Syria troops resume bombardment against ISIS strongholds

The United States-led international coalition killed a key Islamic State (ISIS) financial facilitator in an airstrike in Syria, the U.S. Department of Defense said on Friday. The attack took place on June 16 in in Abu Kamal, according to the announcement. It killed Fawaz Muhammad Jubayr al-Rawi, a Syrian native and an experienced terrorist financial facilitator, who moved millions of dollars for the terror organization's attack and logistics network.
Al-Rawi owned the Hanifa Currency Exchange in Abu-Kamal, which he used along with a network of global financial contacts to move money into and out of ISIS-controlled territory and across borders on behalf of the group, according to the statement. The Treasury Department imposed sanctions on al-Rawi and his company, Hanifa Currency Exchange’s branch in Abu Kamal, in December of 2016.
Al-Rawi pledged loyalty to ISIS in 2014 and used his network of global financial contacts to help ISIS conduct weapons and ammunition deals at a time when the terrorist group was seizing land and committing atrocities across Syria and Iraq, according to the Department of Defense.
In 2015, he facilitated ISIS financial transactions and money storage, including payments to ISIS foreign terrorist fighters; his property was also used by senior ISIS leaders for weekly meetings. As of May 2016, he was considered an ISIS finance emir, whose money exchange business was used for ISIS-related transactions.
Al-Rawi becomes the latest ISIS member to have been killed in Iraq and Syria. Earlier this week, U.S.-led coalition forces said they killed the group’s chief cleric, Turki Al-Binali, in a Syria airstrike last month. Al-Binali, who called himself "Grand Mufti," was reportedly killed in an airstrike on May 31 in Mayadin.
The cleric's main role was recruiting extremists and causing terrorist attacks across the globe. Al-Binali, who has been the group's chief cleric since 2014, supplied propaganda encouraging murder and other atrocious acts.
Last month, the Syrian army said it had killed ISIS’s “minister of war”, Abu Musab al-Masri. A previous ISIS minister of war, Abu Omar al-Shishani, was killed last year. The Pentagon said Shishani was likely to have been killed in a U.S. air strike in Syria.
Also last month, deputy ISIS leader Ayad al-Jumaili was killed in an air strike carried out by the Iraqi air force in the region of al-Qaim, near the border with Syria. More than 20 members of the Syrian regime forces were either killed or wounded during to their violent attack on Jobar neighborhood in the Syrian Capital, Damascus.
Qasioun News reported, on Wednesday, that the Syrian regime forces launched an offensive on Jobar neighborhood, northeast of Damascus, where violent clashes took place between the government forces and Syrian rebels, amid mutual artillery and rockets shelling. Furthermore, over 20 members of the regime forces had been either killed or wounded in the clashes that broke out in Jobar neighborhood between the two sides.
Meanwhile, warplanes carried out more than seven air strikes on the neighborhood, resulting significant damage to the area, but no casualties were reported, while several mortar shells fell on the regime-held neighborhoods of Damascus, causing only material damage. It is noteworthy, Syrian government forces and their affiliated militias are trying to advance into Jobar neighborhood since Monday, however, all their attempts failed.
Food aid has reached Syria’s Kurdish-dominated city of Qamishli by road for the first time in two years in a “humanitarian breakthrough” that will increase support for tens of thousands of families, the United Nations said on Thursday.
Although Qamishli lies on the Turkish border, the crossing is closed and the U.N. aid effort in northeastern Syria has relied on airlifts from Damascus to Qamishli since July 2016.
Last week, Syria gave the U.N. permission to get aid to Qamishli by truck, relieving the strain on a base that is supporting thousands of people who have been displaced by the war with Islamic State.
A convoy of three lorries from Homs has since arrived in the city in the northeastern Hasakeh region, passing by Aleppo and bringing a month’s supply of food for 15,000 people, the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) said.
“This humanitarian breakthrough will allow us to increase regular support for all 250,000 people in need in Hasakeh,” WFP’s Syria country director Jakob Kern said in a statement. The agency said it could previously assist only 190,000 people by airlifts, due to higher costs and limited capacity.
“Once regular land access to Hasakeh is established, WFP will gradually phase out of its current airlift operation,” Kern said. That could save the agency some $19 million annually – enough to provide a year’s food aid to 100,000 people, WFP said.
WFP flights had been running at full capacity, twice a day, six days a week for almost a year. Roads became inaccessible in December 2015, and restoration of deliveries was only made possible by improved security, the agency said.
The development came as U.S. backed Syrian militias were closing in on Islamic State’s Syrian stronghold of Raqqa. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which include Arab and Kurdish fighters and are supported with air strikes by a U.S.-led coalition, began an offensive two weeks ago to seize the northern city from Islamic State, which overran it in 2014.
Earlier in June, the U.N. said it estimated that 440,000 people might need humanitarian aid as a result of the offensive.