DAMASCUS: Daesh killed nine Syrian students when they shelled a school in the eastern city of Deir El Zor on Tuesday, SANA reported.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said nine girls were killed and another 20 wounded, mostly students from the regime-held district of Hrabesh.

“The toll is likely to worsen as some of the injured are in serious condition,” the Observatory’s Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP. The Syrian government condemned the attack.

“The terrorist rockets will not prevent us from continuing our mission of education,” said Prime Minister Wael Al-Halaqi.

In the west of the country, at least 20 airstrikes likely to have been carried out by Russia caused injuries in Latakia province, said the Observatory.

Elsewhere in Latakia, forces loyal to President Bashar Assad fought fierce battles with rebels, leaving several dead on both sides, it added.

Iraqi security forces advanced Tuesday into the center of Ramadi for a final push aimed at retaking the city they lost to the Daesh group in May, officials said.

“We went into the center of Ramadi from several fronts and we began purging residential areas,” said Sabah Al-Noman, spokesman of the elite Iraqi counter-terrorism service.

“The city will be cleared in the coming 72 hours,” he said.

“We did not face strong resistance, only snipers and suicide bombers and this is a tactic we expected,” Noman told AFP.

The fresh push was launched overnight and is meant to result in the full recapture of Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s western province of Anbar.

Footage on state TV channel Iraqiya showed soldiers driving down the deserted streets of the bombed-out city, entering homes carefully to spot possible booby traps and retrieving shells and rockets from abandoned positions.

The fighting in Ramadi is led by the elite counter-terrorism force, backed by US-led coalition airstrikes and also supported by forces from the police, the army and Sunni tribes opposed to the terrorists.

“We built temporary bridges on the Euphrates and our forces were able to cross the river to enter residential areas and gain access to the city center,” a brigadier general said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“The distance between our forces and the governmental compound, which is located in the central district of Hoz, is less than a kilometer,” said the brigadier general, adding that clashes were ongoing.

According to another military official, 15 families managed to escape from Hoz in the past 24 hours.

“They were able to flee the lockdown imposed by Daesh on civilians and they found shelter with the army on the southern side of the city,” he said.

The senior officer said the civilians were mostly children, women and elderly men, who were screened and then taken to a safe area on the edge of Ramadi.

Iraq’s Defense Minister Khaled Al-Obeidi and other officials said in recent days they believed there were still a few civilians in Ramadi being used as human shields by Daesh.

The coalition said its aircraft had carried out six strikes on Daesh targets in the Ramadi area on Tuesday alone.