BEIRUT
(AP) -- In a brazen assault near the Syrian capital, Islamic State
militants on Thursday abducted 300 cement workers and contractors in an
area northeast of Damascus, Syrian state TV reported as fighting
elsewhere in the country also worsened.
Meanwhile,
the U.N. special envoy for Syria said the next round of peace talks in
Geneva was expected to start next week, around April 13. Staffan de
Mistura said the new round should focus on a political process that he
hoped would lead to a "concrete or real beginning of a political
transition."
State TV said Thursday's mass
abduction of workers from the al-Badia Cement Company took place in
Dumeir, an area where militants launched a surprise attack against
government forces earlier this week. State-run news agency SANA quoted a
source in the company as saying that there has been no success in
efforts to establish contact with any of the workers.
The
Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the
Syria conflict, said earlier in the day that contact was lost with
dozens of workers in Dumeir.
No further
details of the abduction were immediately known and there has been no
claim of responsibility. Mass abductions have taken place on occasion in
Syria during the country's devastating civil war, now in its sixth
year, most often of religious minorities such as Christians.
The
abduction came as fighting with IS militants raged in northern Syria on
Thursday. Syrian opposition fighters have advanced on strongholds of
the Islamic State group, including the IS-held town of al-Rai in
northern Aleppo along the border with Turkey.
De
Mistura told reporters in Geneva that he is also embarking on a tour
that will take him to Damascus and the Iranian capital of Tehran and
possibly also the Jordanian capital, Amman, in search of an
understanding about what could be a framework of a political transition.
Two
rounds of "proximity talks" involving Syrian opposition and government
representatives in Geneva have ended without any progress on ways to end
the war in Syria, now in its sixth year.
Earlier
Thursday, Jan Egeland, de Mistura's humanitarian aid adviser, said he
is "disappointed" with recent efforts to get aid convoys into
hard-to-reach and besieged areas, and called on the government to "live
up to its promises."
Also speaking in Geneva,
Egeland told reporters that "April was supposed to be our best month"
but that aid delivery is "not getting better and better, it's actually
slowing down."
Humanitarian assistance to
Syria's people is part of an international response to the country's
crisis that also includes a U.S.-Russia-brokered cease-fire that has
largely held over the last month.
