Date: Apr 22, 2019 Source: The Daily Star Militants kill more than 60 regime fighters across Syria Assad discusses peace talks, trade with Russian envoys Agence France Presse BEIRUT: Islamist militants have killed more than 60 Syrian regime fighters in 48 hours, an activist group said Saturday, in some of the deadliest attacks on pro-Damascus forces in recent weeks. Kurdish-led forces in March announced the defeat of the Daesh (ISIS) "caliphate" in eastern Syria, but the extremists have retained hideouts there and in other parts of the country as well as the ability to carry out deadly assaults. Since Thursday, Daesh militants have killed 35 pro-Damascus fighters in regime-held parts of central and eastern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Observatory chief Rami Abdel-Rahman said it was "the highest death toll among regime forces since the caliphate was declared defeated" in the eastern village of Baghouz last month. Regime fighters also came under attack on another front of Syria's grinding eight-year-old war, the Britain-based activist group added. Since Thursday Daesh has killed 27 troops and allied militiamen, including four Syrian army officers, in the desert east of Homs province, the Observatory said. The Observatory also said the group’s fighters killed another eight soldiers and militiamen in the eastern province of Deir al-Zor on Thursday night. That attack targeted a desert village south of the city of Mayadin on the Euphrates River, upstream from Baghouz. Separately, militants linked to Syria's former Al-Qaeda affiliate attacked loyalists outside the northwestern region of Idlib Saturday, killing 26 pro-Assad fighters, the Observatory said. In the northwestern Idlib region, Assad's forces face Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, Syria's former Al-Qaeda affiliate. The attack by an HTS affiliate on the western edges of Aleppo city killed 21 loyalists while an ambush by HTS-linked militants took the lives of five more pro-regime fighters in the northeast of Latakia province. Assad discusses peace talks, trade with Russian envoys Reuters BEIRUT/MOSCOW: Syrian President Bashar Assad met senior officials from his strongest ally Russia in Damascus on Friday and Saturday to discuss upcoming peace talks and trade between the two countries, state media in Syria reported. Moscow has pushed for a political process involving talks on a new constitution and elections as a way to end the eight-year-long conflict, but Assad has played down the possibility that the Turkey-backed opposition or foreign countries might participate. Russia's Foreign Ministry said late Friday that Assad had met Moscow's Syria envoy Alexander Lavrentiev, Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin and several Russian Defense Ministry officials. However, while it said they had discussed the formation of a constitutional committee, which Syria's opposition last year agreed to join under U.N. auspices after a Russian-hosted peace conference, Syrian state media did not mention it. Syria's official SANA news agency said meetings had focused on the next round of talks in Kazakhstan involving Syria, its allies Russia and Iran, and the rebels' backer Turkey. On Saturday, SANA said Assad had met Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov to discuss trade and economic cooperation, "particularly in the fields of energy, industry and increasing trade." It said Assad and Borisov discussed mechanisms to overcome obstacles including those "resulting from the sanctions which countries against the Syrian people imposed on Syria." The United States and European Union imposed tough sanctions on Syria early in the conflict over what they described as atrocities carried out by the government, which it denies. This week, Syrian state media reported that a fuel shortage which has resulted in rationing and long queues at petrol stations came in the context of difficulty in importing fuel and the halting of a credit line from Iran. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said in a statement Saturday carried by SANA that "Syria is always coordinating with Iran."