According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a weekend offensive by the Syrian military has claimed at least a dozen villages east of Aleppo, and killed at least 50 ISIS fighters in the area.
Backed by Russian airstrikes, the Syrian military has been looking to make gains across the Aleppo Province in recent weeks, and this most recent focus appears aimed at cutting ISIS’ supply route in the province’s southeast, and controlling the roads east of the city of Aleppo.
In addition to the villages already taken in the latest offensive, the Observatory reported the Syrian military had another 16 villages surrounded, and appears poised to push into those as well. ISIS is likely to be pushed further north, into their strongholds around Jarabulus.
Continued calls for a partial ceasefire in Syria are likely to limit the Syrian military’s ability to push much further into the city of Aleppo itself, but as those ceasefires explicitly exclude ISIS, they will be able to continue to recover territory from them.