Islamic State tightens grip on Syrian government road to Aleppo
Islamic State fighters were reported to have tightened their grip on a Syrian government supply route to Aleppo on February 23 as the army battled to retake the road as part of its campaign to seize the city.
As Damascus accepted a US-Russian plan for a "cessation of hostilities" between the government and rebels due to take effect on February 27, heavy Russian air strikes were also said to be targeting one of the last roads into opposition-held parts of Aleppo.
The plan announced by the United States and Russia on February 22 is the result of intensive diplomacy to end the five-year-long war.
But rebels say the exclusion of Islamic State and the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front will give the government a pretext to keep attacking them because its fighters are widely spread in opposition-held areas.
The Syrian government, backed by Russian air strikes since September, said it would coordinate with Russia to define which groups and areas would be included in what it called a "halt to combat operations".
Damascus also warned that continued foreign support for the rebels could wreck the agreement.
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Damascus, backed by ground forces including Lebanon's Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guards, is making significant advances, including near the city of Aleppo which is split between rebel- and government-control.
The Islamic State assault has targeted a desert road which the government has been forced to use to reach Aleppo because insurgents still control the main highway further west.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which reports the war using a network of sources on the ground, said Islamic State fighters had seized the village of Khanaser on the road, which remained closed for a second day.
A Syrian military source told Reuters army operations were continuing to repel the attack.
Islamic State, which controls swathes of eastern and central Syria, differs from rebels fighting Assad in western Syria because its priority is expanding its own "caliphate" rather than reforming Syria through Assad's removal from power.
The group has escalated attacks on government targets in recent days. On February 21, it staged some of the deadliest suicide bomb attacks of the war, killing around 150 people in government-controlled Damascus and Homs.
