KOBANI – A leading commander in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) Omid Kabar during a funeral for fighters that were killed in the Raqqa campaign said they will not handover Tabqa to the Syrian regime, the local news agency Hawar News (ANHA) reported.



The SDF official said that so far 300 regime soldiers have surrendered themselves in the last period to the SDF. The official said they will not handover ‘any inch of land liberated by the blood of martyrs to any force,” he added.

"The regime says we will hand over our regions or Tabqa city to the regime's army," Kabar said during the funeral. "Our people must realize that within five years of our revolution as People Protection Units and after our alliance with other factions in the name of Syrian Democratic Forces, we have not handed over any inch of our land,” he added.

"We will never hand it over. Our law is clear. The land that is watered with the blood of the martyrs belongs to the people and we will not hand them over to any force," he concluded.



Recently, the Syrian regime forces were forced to abandon many of their points in the Syrian desert in the Deir ar-Zour province to ISIS, while the SDF forces are advancing on Markada.



The SDF forces on 9 September launched the Jazeera Storm to liberate the Deir ez-Zor, which led to tensions between the Russian-backer regime forces and the US-backed SDF over who controls the oil-rich region. On 25 September, the SDF accused the Russian government of bombing SDF positions which killed one of it’s fighters and injured two. Yesterday there were allegations that the regime shelled SDF forces.



“The liberation of Deir ez-Zor is a wish of the Syrian people. The Deir ez-Zor military council was established two years ago. The people of Deir ez-Zor took part in the battles for Manbij and Raqqa, and gave many martyrs,” Mazlum Kobani, the chief commander of the SDF Mazlum Kobani told Al Monitor. “They are a fundamental component of the SDF as well. We launched this operation earlier on their request, and it is going on,” he added. “Our goal is to go as far as we can. Deir ez-Zor has to be liberated from [IS],” he concluded.



A coalition commander told AFP, that one of their main targets is the city of Al Mayadeen, in the oil-rich city of Deir Ezzor.

"We're going for Al-Mayadeen. There are a lot of folks in Al-Mayadeen who plot external attacks on our homelands, on coalition homelands, so we can't allow it to remain an IS sanctuary," the commander said.



Tobias Schneider, a London-based defence analyst told the Region that the costly Assad offensive towards Deir az-Zor is to contain US influence.



“The regime considers any American presence in Syria an existential threat and will work to contain and eventually evict it,” he said. “The US is the only power it cannot easily deter through its Russian allies and that can thus force a political compromise,” he concluded.