The Syrian army regained control of a road southeast of Aleppo on Wednesday, state television said, taking back the government’s only supply route into the city from ISIS fighters who had seized it last month.
Army forces took full control of the road which runs from Aleppo through the towns of Khanaser and Ithriya and links up with the cities of Hama and Homs further south, the channel flashed in a news bulletin. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group confirmed the report, according to Al Arabiya.
The road is the army’s supply route to government-held western parts of Aleppo, home to around 2 million people.
Rebels are mainly in the eastern sector of the city, which was Syria’s most populous before the conflict broke out in 2011.
ISIS said late last month it had taken control of most of the Syrian army checkpoints on the road and seized large caches of ammunition from army outposts in the area.
Areas around Aleppo have seen weeks of heavy fighting after Syrian troops backed by Lebanese Hezbollah and Iranian fighters launched an offensive to retake territory around Aleppo from rebels and jihadist fighters.
The offensive has concentrated so far on clearing insurgent-held areas south of Aleppo rather than the city itself.
It is one of several assaults carried out by pro-government ground forces since Russian jets began carrying out air strikes on Sept. 30 in support of President Bashar al-Assad.
Syrian troops are also trying to advance to the east of Aleppo towards Kweires military airport, aiming to break a siege of the base by ISIS and other insurgents.
Islamic State crisis: Kurds ‘recapture key Kobane hill’
Tall Shair was recaptured after US-led air attacks targeting IS in and around the town of Kobane
Kurdish fighters battling Islamic State (IS) say they have recaptured a strategically important hilltop west of Kobane on Syria’s border with Turkey.
The advances were made after a series of air strikes by the US-led coalition.
The hill, Tall Shair, was captured more than 10 days ago by IS militants, who have besieged the area for a month.
Later on Tuesday, US President Barack Obama will hold talks with military chiefs from more than 20 countries on how to combat IS in Syria and Iraq.
Correspondents say the meeting in Washington is the first time such high-ranking military officials from so many countries have come together since the US-led coalition was formed last month.
In a separate development, Turkish warplanes on Monday bombed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) rebel targets in Hakkari province near the Iraqi border, causing “heavy casualties”, Turkish media report.
If confirmed, this would be the first major air raid by Turkey on the PKK since a ceasefire was reached in March in 2013.
Syrian army launches counter-attack to recapture gas field
Syrian government forces have launched a counter-attack to recapture a gas field seized by Islamic extremists, as the death toll from three days of fighting rose to more than 200, activists said Saturday, July 19, 
according to the Associated Press.
The intense fighting in the Shaer field, which lies in the desert region of Palmyra in the central province of Homs, has been among the deadliest between government forces and the Islamic State group since the start of the Syrian uprising more than three years ago.
Fighters from the Islamic State group have in the past few weeks seized a huge chunk of territory straddling the Iraq-Syria border, where they declared a self-styled caliphate. They have also captured much of Syria’s oil-rich eastern province of Deir el-Zour.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said special forces launched an attack late Friday on the Shaer field in the central province of Homs and regained parts of it.
The Observatory said that the number of troops, guards and workers killed in the gas field since it was captured Thursday has risen to 270, adding that some were captured and killed by militants.
An unnamed Jordanian military official was quoted by Jordan’s state news agency as saying that border guards have received 411 Syrian refugees over the past three days. The official said 46 of them were seriously wounded and were admitted to field hospitals and that 12 died.