“Heavy clashes took place overnight between IS fighters and rebels inside the walls of Marea town”, British-based monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Saturday.
Advertisement
The IS advances on Friday encroach on a corridor of rebel-held territory that leads from the Turkish border down towards Aleppo city, which is divided between insurgent and government control.
Global medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said it evacuated patients and staff from a hospital in the area as the fighting got closer, and that tens of thousands of people were trapped between the frontlines and Turkish border.
At least two people were killed in barrel bomb attacks on an opposition-controlled eastern district of Aleppo city, the civil defence, known as the White Helmets said.
The advance has besieged around 15,000 residents remaining inside Marea, he said.
Rebel groups battling Islamic State in the area, which Washington sees as strategically vital, have been supplied with weapons via Turkey.
The UN’s refugee agency said it was deeply concerned about the plight of more than 160,000 displaced people who are massed in the north of the country.
But, he said, the Kurdish-Arab alliance fighting IS north of its de facto Syrian capital had as yet made no strategic progress on the ground.
It now transpires the small rebel group was hit by a major ISIS suicide attack on May 7, killing most of its members, according to its leader Lieutenant Colonel Mohammed Tallaa.
Advertisement
Islamic State (IS) has been fighting against rebels in the area for several months.
