Ceasefire deal sealed for rebel pocket near Damascus

A ceasefire deal for a Syrian rebel enclave south of Damascus was reached on Thursday, brokered by Cairo and Moscow, Egyptian state media said.

Rebel factions hold a small pocket of territory south of Damascus, bordered to the west by a Daesh enclave and surrounded from the other sides by Syrian regime troops and allied forces.

"We announced a preliminary agreement over the will to enter into a ceasefire and de-escalation deal for the area," Jaish al Islam political leader Mohammad Alloush said in televised comments. 

Details would be worked out in the near future, he said.

The agreement, which includes the Jaish al Islam rebel faction, went into effect at midday on Thursday (1000 GMT), Egyptian state television said.

The announcement did not name the exact area or towns covered by the ceasefire, and did not mention the Syrian regime.

There was no immediate comment from Damascus.

Fighting between Syrian regime and rebels

Backed by Russia, Iran and Shia militias, the regime has pushed back rebels over the past year, shoring up its rule over the main urban centres.

Through a series of military offensives and evacuation deals, the regime has snuffed out several opposition pockets around Damascus.

Thousands of rebels and civilians have poured into the insurgent-held Idlib province in northwest Syria, transferred out of towns and cities that the Syrian regime army retook.

In recent months, a string of ceasefire deals has eased some of the fighting between regime forces and rebels in western Syria, including a truce in the southwest brokered by Russia and the US. 

Washington's Syria policy 

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has given assurances that Washington's only goal in Syria is fighting Daesh, the TASS news agency cited Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying on Thursday.

Lavrov said he had last had a telephone conversation with Tillerson on October 9, the agency reported.

Russia's defence ministry accused the US on Tuesday of pretending to fight Daesh and of deliberately reducing its air strikes in Iraq to allow the group's militants to stream into Syria to slow the Russian-backed advance of the Syrian regime army.

Lavrov, touching upon a possible US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, said it was hard to imagine how it could be legally implemented, TASS reported. 

Yazidi fighters in Raqqa

Many Yazidi fighters are taking part in the Raqqa battle in Syria in revenge of Daesh violence against their people.

The PKK-backed Yazidis were targeted by Daesh in 2014 as the militant group tried to force all non-Muslims out of areas around Mosul. 

In the ensuing massacre, an estimated 5,000 Yazidis were murdered. 

Between 5,000 to 7,000 Yazidi women and children were kidnapped by the militants as slaves. 

But the Yazidis are now fighting back against Daesh.

These Yazidi fighters have come all the way from Shingal in Iraq because they say they want to defeat Daesh and take revenge for the massacres in 2014.

After Daesh overran Mosul, they moved on to Mount Shingal, home of the Yazidis, a small but unique ethnic group of non-Muslims living in the area.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighting Daesh in Raqqa are made up of groups from all over northern Syria, mainly under the control of the YPG. 

But one small group comes from Mount Shinjar in northern Iraq.

The YPG is the Syria-based offshoot of the PKK. 

PKK is recognised as a terrorist organisation by the European Union, the US and Turkey. 

The group resumed its armed campaign against Turkey in July 2015 and since then has been responsible for the deaths of close of 1,200 people including security personnel and civilians.

Battle in Al Mayadeen town 

The Syrian regime army and its allies have captured areas of Daesh-held Al Mayadeen in eastern Syria, a Hezbollah-run military news outlet reported on Thursday, in an advance into the group's main urban base of operations in Syria.

Backed by Russia, Iran and Shia militias, the Syrian regime army encircled the militants in Al Mayadeen on Sunday.

In June, two US intelligence officials told that they believed Daesh had moved most of its diminished command structure and propaganda team to Al Mayadeen, southeast of its former capital of Raqqa.