Islamic State fighters seized rebel-controlled territory on Friday near Syria’s border with Turkey in an advance that one monitoring group called the caliphate’s most significant in the region in more than two years.
Advertisement
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the monitoring group, said Tabqa would be a hard military target because Islamic State has large stocks of weapons there.
Following the suicide bombings, IS militants entered Marea and fighting began inside the town, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based opposition media outfit that tracks Syria’s civil war.
Jamie Bright, who reportedly worked as an army engineer and a painter in Perth, joined the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, previous year and died last week, according to the group’s post on social media, which described him as a martyr.
Reports suggest he was killed alongside other soldiers fighting against Islamic State militants in Syria.
With Turkey objecting to any Kurdish move towards the border areas, the U.S. apparently persuaded the Democratic Forces of Syria to push towards al-Raqqa instead. The city itself is not a target of the current offensive however, the SDF has said.
“We are looking at that very carefully”, Capt Davis said of Turkey’s offer, acknowledging the Manbji corridor “is the area where foreign fighters have flowed in … with impunity” into Syria.
The system would allow Turkey to hit IS positions within a 90-kilometre (56-mile) range, while Turkish artillery has a more limited range of 40 kilometres.
Besides US special forces and advisers, American volunteers have also been seen fighting alongside the Kurdish militia in Syria. A spokesman explained of the YPG insignia that special operations troops dress idiosyncratically, in this case in order to “blend in”.
AFP pictures of USA commandos wearing the YPG insignia drew condemnation on Saturday from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose government regards the group as a puppet of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which Ankara has been battling for more than three decades.
The American fighter says that his being in the warzone is a way to show to the Kurds that the world cares about their struggle against the terrorists.
The predominantly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces, who are fighting for their autonomy in the multilayered conflict, also gained ground against the rebels. They said the troops were moving with Syrian rebel forces as they headed toward Raqqa, and that it’s possible they were closer to the front line of battle than they had been before.
Advertisement
“We advise [the U.S. troops] to wear badges of [the Islamic State group] or [the Al Qaida affiliate] Al-Nusra when they go to other parts of Syria and badges of Boko Haram when they go to Africa”, Cavusoglu said derisively. “This is something that they often do, and it’s an effort to, you know, just kind of connect with those that they’re training”.
