MESOP TODAYS NEWS ROUND UP SYRIA Monday, October 26 – Regime route supplying Aleppo battle in danger as Islamic State captures segment

AMMAN: After three days of battle, the Islamic State (IS) has reportedly captured a key section of the last regime-held supply route into Aleppo city, cutting off land-based supplies to regime forces fighting in a recent Russian-backed offensive to encircle the provincial capital, Aleppo-based journalists told Syria Direct Monday. The road connecting battle lines in Aleppo and its surrounding countryside to regime-held cities, towns and villages to the south extends approximately 50km. While reports vary, at least 15km of this route is now in the hands of the Islamic State. An estimated 11 regime checkpoints lie along this road–all 11 of which have since fallen to IS, boasted the Islamic State on Sunday.

Pro-regime daily Al-Watan implied at least some of the road was lost to IS, reporting on Monday “the Syrian army is completing its attack to capture the Hama-Aleppo road from the Islamic State.”

Accounts differ as to precisely how much of the road now lies under IS control; estimates range from 15km, tweeted Radio Sawa Washington correspondent Zaid Benjamin on Monday, up to 18km, according to an Orient News report on Saturday.

The captured road connects the regime’s Aleppo front to supplies and reinforcements to the southwest in Hama through the three towns of a-Salamiyah, Ithriya and Khanaser. From Hama city, regime supplies first run through a-Salamiyah, approximately 30km to the southeast, before swinging northeast to Ithriya, another 75km away.After Ithriya, regime supply trucks move northwest to the Aleppo countryside through the town of Khanaser. It is a stretch along this final, vital leg of road, from Ithriya to Khanaser, that now reportedly lies in IS hands. Khanaser itself reportedly remains under regime control.  The regime still controls the leg originating in a-Salamiyah, but it was not immediately clear where Islamic State picks up control of the road.The a-Salamiya-Khanaser road “is the regime’s last supply route for ground shipments and troop transports into Aleppo–especially Shiite militia reinforcements heading north from Hama to the Aleppo battlefront,” Amar al-Halaby, a journalist and media activist on the battle’s frontlines, told Syria Direct Monday.“If IS manages to hang on to the road, it will break the back of the regime’s offensive in Aleppo,” he added.As rebel-held Idlib lies just next-door to the west, “the Victory Army will share a new frontline with IS from the east,” said al-Halaby.