For the fourth straight day in the Al-Hasakah Governorate, the militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS) attempted to breach the Syrian Armed Forces’ frontline defenses at the southern entrance of the provincial capital, as non-stop fighting between the two opposing parties engulfed the city’s gates and illuminated the night sky with mortar shells, rockets, and gunfire on Wednesday night.
ISIS launched another attempt to enter the provincial capital after they captured the Al-Hasakah Power Plant, and the villages of Al-Dawoudiyah and Rad Shaqra following their six suicide attacks; however, the National Defense Forces (NDF) and the Syrian Arab Army’s 154th Artillery Brigade of the 4th Mechanized Division held tough near the Panorama Roundabout and the Guweiran District, repelling the terrorist group’s offensive before sunrise on Thursday morning.
As sunrise approached on Thursday morning, the exhausted militants from ISIS withdrew from the southern perimeter of the Guweiran District and the Panorama Roundabout; this withdrawal paved the way for the SAA’s 154th Brigade – in coordination with the NDF, the Al-Ba’ath Battalion, and the Gozarto Protection Forces (Assyrian militia) to launch a counter-attack to recapture the Al-Hasakah Power Plant located just south of the city.
The Syrian Armed Forces were successful: their fierce assault on Thursday morning paid dividends for their embattled soldiers that were entrenched on this front, as the recapture of the Al-Hasakah Powerful Plant allowed them to reenter the villages of Al-Dawoudiyah and Rad Shaqra after being forced to withdrawal their forces due to a fractured frontline.
According to a military source in the Al-Hasakah Governorate, the provincial capital is 100 percent under the control of the Syrian Armed Forces – he has denied any infiltration and asserted that ISIS social media activists have fabricated news.
Firefights are still ongoing at the villages of Al-Dawoudiyah, Rad Shaqra, Malabiyah, Jabal Al-Kawkab, and Al-Abyad, along with the Al-Adhath Central Prison.