The Syrian regime army and its allies have advanced to within 10 km of Mayadin, a military media unit run by Hezbollah said Friday, bringing them close to a city seen as the current main base of Daesh (ISIS).
They have won control of positions and heights parallel to the main road linking Deir al-Zor and Mayadin, located on the Euphrates in eastern Syria, the media unit said.
A war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said on Thursday the army was only 6 km from Mayadin.
Daesh has staged fierce counter attacks in central Syria in recent days, testing the army's control of an area seized in a months-long eastward offensive.
Backed by Russian air power, the army has continued its advance towards Mayadin from Deir al-Zor along the Euphrates valley.
In June, two U.S. intelligence officials told Reuters that they believed Daesh had moved most of its diminished command structure and propaganda team to Mayadin, southeast of its former capital of Raqqa.
The Observatory said on Friday there were clashes in several areas in eastern Deir al-Zor province. The Syrian military shelled Mayadin overnight and Syrian and Russian warplanes have conducted hundreds of strikes, it said.
Hezbollah, part of the military alliance supporting President Bashar Assad, said this week a senior commander had been killed in an Daesh attack in Syria's central desert.
Helped by the Russian military and Iran-backed militias last month, the Syrian army's advance to Deir al-Zor lifted a three-year-long siege imposed by Daesh on a government-held enclave in the city.
Daesh has lost swathes of territory to the Syrian government and to U.S.-backed Syrian militias that are waging separate campaigns against the extremist group's last major strongholds in Deir al-Zor province.
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