Syrian government forces enveloped three sides of a key rebel-held town in the country's northwest, and were also advancing against insurgent positions west of the city of Aleppo, state media and opposition activists said Tuesday.
The fresh push came hours before the U.N. special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, was scheduled to arrive in the capital Damascus to meet with officials.
Syrian government forces have been on the offensive for more than a month in the northwestern Idlib province, the last rebel stronghold in the country. But in recent days, the government captured more than a dozen villages in the area as the insurgents' defenses began to crumble. Al-Qaida linked rebels control much of Idlib province and small parts of the adjacent area in Aleppo.
This Monday, Jan. 27, 2020, photo, released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, Syrian army soldiers flash the victory sign as they stand on their tank in western rural Aleppo, Syria. Syrian government forces pressed in their offensive Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2020, closing in on a major rebel stronghold in the northwestern province of Idlib and marching against insurgents west of Aleppo, Syria's largest city, state media and opposition activists said Tuesday. (SANA via AP)
The main target of the government offensive under the cover of intense airstrikes was the strategic rebel-held town of Maaret al-Numan, which sits on the highway linking Damascus with Aleppo. Syrian troops were keeping a road leading west out of the town open, apparently to give insurgents a chance to withdraw.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said Syrian troops had tightened their grip on the town early Tuesday by capturing the nearby village of Kfar Roummah. The village lies to the southwest. Syrian state TV confirmed that government forces are now inside.
Further north, government forces began an offensive on the western suburbs of Aleppo in an attempt to push insurgents away from Syria's largest city. Rebels have rained artillery and mortar shells down on Aleppo in recent days.
This Monday, Jan. 27, 2020, photo, released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, Syrian army soldiers chant slogans as they hold their rifles, in western rural Aleppo, Syria. Syrian government forces pressed in their offensive Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2020, closing in on a major rebel stronghold in the northwestern province of Idlib and marching against insurgents west of Aleppo, Syria's largest city, state media and opposition activists said Tuesday. (SANA via AP)
The government offensive in Idlib province has led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, many of them to areas close to the border with Turkey. The province home to 3 million civilians, and the U.N. has warned of the growing risk of a humanitarian catastrophe along the Turkish border.
The push in Maaret al-Numan and west of Aleppo brought government forces closer to retaking a critical north-south highway that passes through the town, held by rebels since 2012.
In August, Syrian troops captured another town that the highway passes through, Khan Sheikhoun. If Syrian troops capture Maaret al-Numan, their next target is likely to be Saraqeb, which would become the last major town on the M5 highway outside government control.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. officials have developed specific and highly credible intelligence suggesting that an American citizen who disappeared seven years ago while traveling in Syria has died, the man's daughter said Saturday.
Maryam Kamalmaz said in an interview with The Associated Press that during a meeting in Washington this month with eight senior American officials she was presented with detailed intelligence about the presumed death of her father, Majd, a psychotherapist from Texas.
The officials told her that on a scale of one to 10, their confidence level about her father's death was a “high nine." She said she asked whether other detained Americans had ever been successfully recovered in the face of such credible information, and was told no.
“What more do I need? That was a lot of high-level officials that we needed to confirm to us that he’s really gone. There was no way to beat around the bush,” Maryam Kamalmaz said.
She said officials told her they believe the death occurred years ago, early in her father's captivity. In 2020, she said, officials told the family that they had reason to believe that he had died of heart failure in 2017, but the family held out hope and U.S. officials continued their pursuit.
But, she said, “Not until this meeting did they really confirm to us how credible the information is and the different levels of (verification) it had to go through."
She did not describe the intelligence she learned.
A spokesperson for the White House declined to comment Saturday. The FBI's Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell issued a statement that did not offer any update on Kamalmaz but said that no matter how much time has passed, it continues to work “on behalf of the victims and their families to recover all U.S hostages and support the families whose loved ones are held captive or missing.”
Majd Kamalmaz disappeared in February 2017 at the age of 59 while traveling in Syria to visit an elderly family member. The FBI has said he was stopped at a Syrian government checkpoint in a suburb of Damascus and had not been heard from since.
Kamalmaz is one of multiple Americans who have disappeared in Syria, including the journalist Austin Tice, who went missing in 2012 at a checkpoint in a contested area west of Damascus. Syria has publicly denied holding Americans in captivity.
In 2020, in the final months of the Trump administration, senior officials visited Damascus for a high-level meeting aimed at negotiating release of the Americans. But the meeting proved unfruitful, with the Syrians not providing any proof-of-life information and making demands that U.S. officials deemed unreasonable. U.S. officials have said they are continuing to try to bring home Tice.
The New York Times first reported on the presumed death of Majd Kamalmaz.
FILE - Rep. Al Green, right, listens as Samar Hamwi, sister of Majd Kamalmaz, speaks during the Bring Our Families Home Campaign, a campaign led by family members of Americans wrongfully detained or held hostage abroad, news conference on Tuesday, July 4, 2023 in Houston. U.S. officials have developed specific and highly credible intelligence suggesting that Majd Kamalmaz, an American citizen who disappeared seven years ago while traveling in Syria has died, his daughter, Maryam Kamalmaz, said Saturday, May 18. (Yi-Chin Lee/Houston Chronicle via AP, file)
FILE - Maryam Kamalmaz poses for a photo in her home in Grand Prairie, Texas, Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2024. U.S. officials have developed specific and highly credible intelligence suggesting that Majd Kamalmaz, an American citizen who disappeared seven years ago while traveling in Syria has died, Maryam Kamalmazr said Saturday, May 18. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, file)
FILE - Maryam Kamalmaz hold a photo of her father with some of his 14 grandchildren in Grand Prairie, Texas, Jan. 17, 2024. U.S. officials have developed specific and highly credible intelligence suggesting that Majd Kamalmaz, an American citizen who disappeared seven years ago while traveling in Syria has died, Maryam Kamalmaz said Saturday, May 18. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)
