Hizbullah declares victory in Syria

BEIRUT: The Lebanese group Hizbullah has declared victory in the Syrian war while Russia said government forces had driven militants from 85 percent of the country where President Bashar al-Assad’s rule seemed in danger two years ago.

The comments from two Syrian government allies mark the most confident assessments yet of Assad’s position in the war that spiralled out of 2011 "Arab Spring" protests against him. The government’s most recent advances have recovered swathes of territory in eastern Syria from Islamic State, which is being targeted in the same region in a campaign waged by US-backed Kurdish and Arab militias. Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, whose group has sent thousands of fighters to Syria, dismissed the fighting left to be done in Syria as "scattered battles".

"We have won in the war (in Syria)," he said in comments reported by the Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar. Referring to Assad’s opponents, Nasrallah said "the path of the other project has failed and wants to negotiate for some gains". The comments, made at a religious gathering, were confirmed to Reuters by a source familiar with the speech.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the conflict, which has fractured Syria into a patchwork of areas and generated a refugee crisis of historic proportions, forcing millions of people into neighbouring states and Europe.

Military backing from Iran and Russia has proven critical to Assad in the war with insurgents including rebels who have been backed by Gulf Arab states, Turkey and the United States, which has decided to end a programme of covert support to rebels.

Rebel groups were making steady advances against Assad as recently as 2015, when the deployment of the Russian air force to Syria turned the tide in his favour.

Over the past year, Assad has crushed numerous pockets of rebel-held territory in the cities of Aleppo, Homs and Damascus, brokering local deals by which thousands of his opponents have been moved to remaining rebel-held enclaves of the country.

Ceasefires brokered by Russia, Turkey, Iran and the United States in remaining rebel-held areas of western Syria have freed up manpower on the government side, helping its advance east into the oil-rich province of Deir al-Zor.

Government forces last week reached Deir al-Zor city, the provincial capital on the Euphrates River, breaking an Islamic State siege of a government-held enclave and a nearby air base.

"To date, 85 percent of Syria’s territory has been cleared of the militants of illegal armed groups," the RIA news agency cited Alexander Lapin, chief of staff of the Russian military contingent in Syria, as saying. Islamic State fighters are still in control of around 27,000 square km of Syria’s territory, he said. Lapin made no reference to a swathe of territory held in northern Syria by an alliance of US-backed militias - the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) which is led by the Kurdish YPG and is not at war with Assad.