What is currently happening in Syria?

What's happening in Syria?

Syria has been engaged in civil war for the last six years, with different groups trying to seize control of the country....

  The fighting is between:

• Soldiers who support the Syrian president Bashar-al-Assad,
• fighters known as rebels, who don't want Assad to be in power anymore, and
• the group that call themselves the Islamic State.

IS had taken over large parts of Iraq and then moved into eastern Syria. In the chaos of the war they were able to gain land and power there too.

Raqqa was the first big city captured by IS in Syria in early 2014. The group went on take over large parts of the country towards Aleppo in the north, and along the Turkish border.

But they've since lost control of most of this land.

A few weeks ago an alliance of Syrian Kurdish and Arab fighters, backed by America, took back the city of Raqqa in the north-west.

This ended three years of rule by so-called Islamic State (IS) who had made Raqqa their headquarters.

Now Syrian state TV, controlled by the President Assad's government, says the Syrian army has retaken the city of Deir al-Zour, the largest city in eastern Syria.

This was the last major stronghold of IS in Syria, which means IS losing control there is massive news.

Earlier the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based activist group, said government forces had taken control of the city after weeks of fighting.

The city was very important to IS because of it is close to the border with Iraq.

But there is some disagreement over whether IS has been cleared from the area completely.

Syrian state TV report that the city is now completely free from terrorism, while other reports say the Syrian army and its allies were clearing the last pockets of resistance from IS.

Around 350,000 civilians in the province have been forced to run away from their homes.

So what next for Syria?

It doesn't look like the fighting is likely to end any time soon.

There is a stalemate between the two sides. This means that the government forces and the rebel groups are unable to defeat each other or agree on the future.

Lots of countries are trying to continue to supply aid, such as food and emergency supplies.

The rest of the world will continue to try to work out if there is a way to help Syria achieve peace. But for the time being, the conflict continues.

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