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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Syrian Kurds claim capture of border town from Islamic State |
| 2015-06-16 |
| [EN.ZAMANALWSL.NET] Syrian Kurdish-led forces said they had captured a town at the Turkish border from Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... on Monday, driving it away from the frontier in an advance backed by U.S.-led air strikes that has thrust deep into the jihadists' Syria stronghold, Rooters said. The capture of Tel Abyad by the Kurdish YPG and smaller Syrian rebel groups means the Syrian Kurds effectively control some 400 km (250 miles) of the Syrian-Turkish border that has been a conduit for imported muscle joining Islamic State. While the advance has brought the well-organized YPG deep into Islamic State's stronghold of Raqqa province, it has also concerned ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... , which is worried the expansion of Kurdish sway risks inflaming separatist sentiment among its Kurdish minority. The YPG-led forces also seized control of the road linking Tel Abyad to the Islamic State's de facto capital of Raqqa city, about 50 miles (80 km) to the south, cutting off a supply route which Islamic State had used to send reinforcements. Tel Abyad, on the border with Turkey, has been a main conduit for Islamic State to smuggle weapons and oil. The YPG-led forces had advanced into Raqqa after making big gains against Islamic State in neighboring Hasaka province since early May, also with the help of the U.S.-led alliance. While Islamic State was being driven back in Hasaka, it was advancing elsewhere in Syria against government forces, notably in Palmyra, which the jihadists seized from the government in mid-May. The fighting near the border has forced more than 18,000 people to cross into Turkey from Syria, aid workers say. A further 5,000 are believed to have crossed on Monday, according to a Rooters photographer at the scene. Soldiers directed the people, many of whom were elderly, women and kiddies, through a passage in a barbed wire fence to a border facility, he said. In a statement published on Sunday the YPG urged civilians not to leave Syria, saying it was guaranteeing "their security and all of their humanitarian needs". Meanwhile, ...back at the palazzo, Don Smilzo looked for an avenue of escape. The only window opened a hundred feet above the moat. The nearest of the hired assassins hold a bloody axe. The window was looking better all the time.... 15 Syrian rebel groups, including Ahrar al-Sham ...a Syria jihadi group made up of Islamists and salafists, not that there's that much difference, formed into a brigade. They make up the main element of the Islamic Front but they don't profess adoration of al-Qaeda and they've been fighting (mainly for survival) against the Islamic State. Their leadership was wiped out at a single blow by a suicide kaboom at a crowded basement meeting in September, 2014... and al-Shamiya Front, have denounced the ethnic and sectarian cleansing against Arab families in Tel Abyad and areas under Kurdish militias control. The statement of key rebel groups said the forced displacement of Arabs falls under the partition scheme led by PKK and other regional parties. |
| Posted by:Fred |