Syria rebels attacked by IS militants, government troops

The Turkish military usually responds with artillery barrages into northern Syria, but officials have said it is hard to hit mobile Islamic State targets with howitzers.

In a sign of the rebels’ weak position, they handed over the village of Sheikh Issa adjoining Marea to rival Kurdish forces to facilitate safe passage for those fleeing, an activist based on the Syrian-Turkish border, Ammar Jello, said.

But the Kurdish-Arab alliance fighting the jihadist group north of its de facto Syrian capital had made no strategic progress on the ground, he said.

The United Nations has expressed concern about an estimated 8,000 Syrians trapped by fighting in northern Aleppo. The city has been under constant ISIS attacks ever since the Erdogan regime began to seal off the border with Syria months ago. Rebel groups battling ISIS in the area, which Washington sees as strategically vital, have been supplied with weapons via Turkey. This past February, IS and the SDF separately attacked rebel-held Marea from three directions after factions in the town refused an offer from the SDF-which had just pushed 15km eastwards out of Afrin canton to Tel Rifaat, immediately west of Marea-to hand it over without a fight, Syria Direct reported.

The Syrian Democratic Forces, who control a swathe of territory along the Turkish border, launched a push south towards the IS stronghold of Raqa last week, capturing a string of villages in the north of Raqa province.

He said ISIS surrounded the hospital for 10 hours on Friday, injuring two members of staff and forcing doctors to operate on one of them without electricity after ISIS cut off the hospital’s generator.

Alon Ben-David a reporter for Channel 10 in Israel recently visited the Syrian-Turkish border and said in his first report from Turkey that the Islamic State is doing everything it can to keep the Turkish border open.

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IS on Friday encroached from the east on a narrow area of rebel control connected to the Turkish border, through which the rebels have received support.