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Aleppo /Â AFP
Syrian rebels have reopened a vital supply line by capturing two villages from the IS extremist group as it came under pressure on a range of fronts in Syria and Iraq.
IS has controlled large areas of both countries since declaring its self-styled “caliphate” in 2014 but is losing territory in the face of separate assaults. In Syria, pro-government forces, rebels and a US-backed Arab-Kurdish alliance are all engaged in offensives to squeeze the extremists’ supply lines, while Iraqi forces are advancing on the IS-held city of Fallujah.
The Damascus regime has also kept up its assaults on opposition areas, particularly in second city Aleppo, where at least 15 civilians were killed on Wednesday in bombing by pro-government forces.
North of the city, rebel fighters re-opened a key supply route linking their two main bastions in Aleppo province: Marea and Azaz.
In late May, IS captured several villages between the two towns, cutting off access to the Turkish border for Marea’s opposition forces. But early Wednesday, rebels backed by extremist groups launched simultaneous attacks from both Marea and Azaz, squeezing IS extremist out of the villages of Kafr Kalbin and Kaljibrin and reopening the road, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Observatory’s Rami Abdel Rahman said IS fighters even pulled back from towns and villages east of the supply route, including Dudyan near the border.
In Aleppo, barrel bombs dropped from government helicopters killed 10 people near Al-Bayan hospital in Shaar neighbourhood, said the Observatory. “We have three operation rooms and all the equipment inside them was damaged because of the force of the explosion,” doctor Marwan Al Radwan said. An AFP photographer saw bodies wrapped in bloodied white bags outside the hospital, while inside, the force of the blast had knocked supplies and parts of the wall onto the floor.
130 extremists killed in battle for Manbij
Beirut /Â AFP
More than 130 IS group fighters have been killed in a US-backed offensive on the key extremist-held city of Manbij in northern Syria, a monitoring group said on Thursday.
US-led coalition air strikes supporting the assault by Kurdish and Arab fighters, launched on May 31, have also left 30 civilians dead, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Syrian Democratic Forces have been pushing west from the Euphrates River and have nearly encircled Manbij, a key point along IS’s main supply line from the Turkish border to its Syrian stronghold of Raqa.