US-backed Kurdish-led fighters have seized ground from the Islamic State group in Syria, a monitor said Tuesday, as the jihadists come under attack in their Fallujah bastion in neighbouring Iraq.
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While the US, in conjunction with Turkey and other nations, has been bombing Islamic State from the air, Syrian Kurdish fighters have been its chief partner on the ground.
But Observatory Director Rami Abdulrahman said: “The majority are from (YPG), and the operation is basically a YPG operation”.
An Islamic State-affiliated news agency says USA -led aircraft have bombed several key bridges in northern Syria, severing a key IS supply route between the Turkish border and Manbij, where a US -backed and Kurdish-led force is advancing.
The U.S. officials said Kurdish YPG fighters would only represent a fifth or a sixth of the overall force.
The rebel coalition within the area doesn’t appear to have many options left, with ISIS forces in Aleppo not facing many challenges in recent weeks, as the Kurdish YPG has shifted its focus to the Raqqa Province, and the Syrian military forces have mostly been bogged down fighting al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front further south. The Syrian Kurdish YPG militia already controls an uninterrupted 400 km (250 mile) stretch of the border.
Ankara regards the YPG as a branch of the rebel Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), which has fought a three decade insurgency against the Turkish state.
The U.S. and Turkey both advocate such an offensive to clear the jihadist group from a 98-kilometer (62-mile) area along the Turkish border, including its bastions in the towns of Jarablus and Manbij, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.
“It’s significant in that it’s their last remaining funnel” to Europe, a USA military official told Reuters, which was first to report the offensive. Turkish officials have said they need more help from Western allies in defending the border.
Last month, the alliance launched an assault on the militants north of their de facto Syria capital Raqqa, seizing dozens of villages in the north of Raqqa province.
A USA official said Turkey supported the operation, but another clarified it was not expected to directly participate militarily.
US President Barack Obama has authorized about 300 US special operations forces to operate on the ground from secret locations inside Syria to help coordinate with local forces to battle ISIS there.
Separately, another USA service member was injured in northern Iraq, near Erbil over the weekend.
Fears of infiltration Meanwhile, opposition authorities in the rebel-held town of Azaz near the Turkish border had issued a directive on May 24th to not let in any more people fleeing Islamic State-held areas, the OCHA said.
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Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, however, said he believed air drops were impractical and that the land deliveries should be given a chance.The office of the United Nations envoy to Syria said it was looking into every possible means to reach 592,700 people in besieged areas and millions more in hard-to-reach areas facing severe food shortages.The oppositions High Negotiations Committee withdrew from indirect peace talks with the government last month after violence flared and the government stalled on allowing sustained humanitarian access to besieged areas and releasing detainees.In a letter sent to the United Nations secretary-general on Wednesday, HNC chief Riad Hijab called for a comprehensive Ramadan cease-fire as a precondition for resuming talks in July.
