Syrian Kurds and allied rebels advanced against the Islamic State group on Tuesday, capturing a strategic town a day after seizing a base from the militants near their al-Raqqah bastion.
A spokesman for the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and a Britain-based monitor said anti-Islamic State forces took Ain Issa after capturing the nearby Brigade 93 base overnight.
“Ain Issa has come under our full control, along with dozens of villages in the surrounding area,” YPG spokesman Redur Khalil told reporters.
Photo: AFP
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said the Islamic State group had withdrawn from the town and YPG and rebel forces were checking for mines laid by the militants.
Ain Issa’s fall came after the Islamic State group ceded control of the Brigade 93 base late on Monday and the border town of Tal Abyad more than a week ago.
Ain Issa and Brigade 93 are about 55km north of al-Raqqah, the de facto capital of the Islamic State’s self-declared “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq.
They both lie on a main highway between Kurdish-held territory in Syria’s Aleppo Governorate to the west and the al-Hasakeh Governorate to the east.
The same route links territory held by the Islamic State group in both areas.
“It’s also a defense line for al-Raqqah,” Kurdish affairs analyst Mutlu Civiroglu said. “Considering that al-Raqqah is a sort of capital of the caliphate, it creates a lot of pressure [on the Islamic State].”
The YPG-rebel advance has been backed the US-led coalition’s air power, with the monitor saying at least 26 extremists were killed in international strikes in and around Ain Issa on Monday.
The monitor on Tuesday said that at least 2,896 people — mostly militants — had been killed in coalition strikes in Syria since the air campaign began on Sept. 23 last year.
The toll included 2,628 Islamic State members, mostly foreign fighters, as well as 105 fighters from rival group the al-Nusra Front.
According to the monitor, coalition strikes have also killed 162 civilians, 52 of them children, in Syria.
The Pentagon has acknowledged just two civilian deaths in Syria in the international campaign against the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said the group’s defense lines had been “pushed back to the outskirts of al-Raqqah city.”
The capture of Tal Abyad on June 16 cut off a key conduit for the Islamic State group, which had used the border town to bring in fighters and weapons from Turkey and export black market oil.
Kurdish forces have been chipping away territory held by the group in the northern al-Raqqah Governorate for months, after successfully repelling a fierce attack on the town of Kobane in January.
The YPG has emerged as “arguably the most effective fighting force” against the Islamic State in Syria, analyst Sirwan Kajjo said after Tal Abyad’s capture.
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