SYRIAN and Russian forces dealt new defeats to Isis across the country yesterday in their push to lift the siege of Deir Ezzor.

Breaking through to the Isis-surrounded eastern city and the oil-rich province of the same name is seen as the key to defeating the death cult and ending the six-year war.

The Russian-trained Isis Hunters battalion of the Syrian army captured Huwaysis and surrounding countryside in the recently surrounded 45-mile-wide pocket northwest of Palmyra.