Dawn bombing attacks
The Tuesday retaliatory dawn attack (4:00 AM local time or 1:00 AM GMT) happened at a makeshift camp where Iraq refugees and displaced Syrians in Rajim al-Salibeh near the Iraq border, it was reportedly done by five suicide bombers. Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, confirmed that around five suicide attackers blew themselves up both inside and outside the camp for Iraqi refugees and displaced Syrians in Hasakeh province.
With over 21 of the dead being displaced Syrians or Iraq refugees and over 30 wounded with some in critical condition with death tolls expected to rise, some people are still unaccounted for.
The dead are expected to be buried in Al-Hol a nearby town.
Civilians fleeing Islamic State (IS) in both Syria and Iraq have been making their way to the desolate border region seeking protection and possible onward access to safety in the Kurdish-controlled region. The conditions in the camp are as expected in a highly populated area, with little shelter and amenities and authorities being overstretched.
Syrian Military efforts
The U.S backed SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militia, has been busy seizing large swathes of Northern Syria from Islamic State in a campaign focused on pushing to drive the jihadist group out of their base of operations Raqqa city, with the SDF stating that they had claimed most of the strategic town of Tabqa 40 kilometres West of Raqqqa along the Euphrates.
Isis who once controlled large parts of Hasekeh province but have now been pushed out of almost all of it with Kurdish authorities now having control of most of the area. Syria's government still maintains a small presence in the province mostly in its capital Hasekeh city. Isis, however, remains a potent power in neighbouring Deir Ezzor province where a lot of Syrians arriving at the border post are fleeing.
Fighting is said to have continued on Tuesday to capture the last few districts of Tabqa whose location is a strategic position on a supply route about 55 KM West of Raqqa, as well as an adjacent dam, Syria's largest and the last major obstacle as militias prepare to launch an assault on Raqqa. The Islamic State attack on Hasaka was targetted at the Asayish, a Kurdish internal security force operating in Northwest Syria.
Since the conflict began in in March 2011 with anti-government protests, over 320,000 people have suffered and died as casualties of the conflict. The war has also brought in foreign armies and fighters including jihadists fighting alongside IS.
