Turkey backed rebels kill 68 IS fighters near Syria’s Al-Bab
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ANKARA, Dec 24, (Agencies): Syrian rebels backed by Turkish warplanes killed 68 Islamic State militants in northern Syria overnight, the Turkish military said on Saturday, as intense fighting around the town of al-Bab continued. Rebels supported by Turkish troops have laid siege to the Islamic State-held town for weeks under the “Euphrates Shield” operation launched by Turkey nearly four months ago to sweep the Sunni hardliners and Kurdish fighters from its Syrian border.
Fighting around al-Bab has escalated this week with Turkish soldiers and 138 jihadists killed in clashes on Wednesday in the deadliest day since the start of Turkey’s Syrian incursion. Sixty-eight Islamic State militants have been “neutralised” in fighting and air strikes near al-Bab since Friday night, the military said in a statement. A total of 141 Islamic State targets were hit in the attacks and one of its military headquarters was destroyed, the military said, adding that two of the Turkishbacked rebel fighters had been killed and one wounded.
Defence Minister Fikri Isik said on Friday that the area around a hospital used as a command centre and ammunition depot by Islamic State had been cleared of militants, marking a breakthrough for the rebels. Speaking in Kocaeli province, near Istanbul, Isik also said authorities had information three Turkish soldiers had been captured by Islamic State but nothing else had been confirmed.
Islamic State in Syria released a video on Thursday purporting to show two captured Turkish soldiers being burned to death, according to the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group which monitors militant groups online. Meanwhile, an explosion rocked eastern Aleppo Saturday as some residents were returning to their homes after the government assumed full control of the city earlier this week, state TV reported while fresh airstrikes on a rebel-held town near Aleppo killed at least five people.
The airstrikes on areas near the northern city of Aleppo show that the government has resumed military activities after days of clam that coincided with the evacuation of tens of thousands of civilians and rebels from east Aleppo. On Thursday, President Bashar Assad’s forces took control of eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo for the first time since July 2012, marking the government’s biggest victory since the crisis began more than five years ago.
Government forces will likely now try to secure the outskirts of the city as rebels are based in the western and southwestern suburbs of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and once commercial center. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said an airstrike on the town of Atareb, west of Aleppo, killed five people including a man, his daughter and daughter-in-law.
The Aleppo Media Center, an activist collective, said the airstrikes killed seven people including a woman and two children. The Saturday noon airstrike on Atareb came after airstrikes on nearby villages the night before killed three rebels, according to the Observatory. Earlier Saturday, state TV said the explosion in east Aleppo was caused by a device left inside a school by Syrian rebels, who withdrew from their last remaining enclave under a ceasefire deal after more than four years of fighting. It said three people were wounded in the blast. A correspondent for Lebanon’s Hezbollah- run Al-Manar TV was reporting live from the area when the blast sounded in the background, sending a huge cloud of dust into the air.
The correspondent later said that at least three people were killed. In the capital Damascus, state news agency SANA said militants blew up the Barada water pipeline in the suburb of Kafr al-Zayt. SANA quoted the director of Damascus and Damascus Countryside Water Establishment Hussam Hreidin as saying that the pipeline went out of service due to the attack. He added that the pipeline had been fixed and its service restored on Friday less than a month after a similar attack. Pro-government media said the government was forced to cut water supplies coming to the Syrian capital for a few days and use reserves instead after rebels polluted the water with diesel.
The al-Fija spring which supplies Damascus with water is in the rebel-held Barada valley northwest of the capital in a mountainous area near the Lebanese border. The cut in water supplies comes at a time when government forces and their allies are on the offensive in the Barada Valley area. Two people were killed Saturday in a blast at an ammunitions warehouse formerly used by rebels in the battered Syrian city of Aleppo, state media reported. State news agency SANA said the explosion took place at a school that had been transformed into “an ammunitions and explosive devices warehouse left behind by terrorist groups in the Sukkari neighbourhood”.
Citing a police source, it said another 33 people were wounded in the blast, four of them critically, but did not specify whether they were civilians or government troops. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group also reported two killed in the Sukkari warehouse, but said the blast took place as army troops were dismantling explosives. The Britain-based monitor said one other person was killed when an improvised explosive device detonated in a home in the Ansari district. Since declaring Aleppo fully under its control on Thursday, Syria’s army has been sweeping through former rebel neighbourhoods in search of explosives and mines.
President Bashar al-Assad’s win in Aleppo is the most devastating blow to rebel forces since the uprising erupted in March 2011. For more than four years, the northern city was divided between opposition fighters in the east and regime forces in the west. On Saturday, six civilians were killed in air strikes on the rebel-held town of Atareb, west of Aleppo city, the Observatory said. At least two children were among the dead, according to the monitor. It could not immediately specify who had carried out the air raids, but Russian and regime warplanes typically carry out raids in Aleppo province.
An AFP correspondent in Atareb said military aircraft could be seen circling above the town and a nearby village throughout the day. Moscow launched its air war in support of Assad’s forces in September 2015, marking a major turning point in the regime’s fight against rebel groups. The top Roman Catholic cleric in the Holy Land says he’s glad that “at least the military war” in the Syrian city of Aleppo is over and that Christians there can celebrate Christmas “without fear.” The Rev Pierbattista Pizzaballa traveled from Jerusalem in a traditional Christmas Eve procession on Saturday ahead of midnight Mass in Bethlehem. He told The Associated Press that he hoped the people of Aleppo could “rebuild the city, not only the infrastructure but also the common relations that was a tradition over there.” The Syrian government assumed full control of Aleppo earlier this month when rebels, including some Islamic militants, agreed to withdraw from their last remaining enclave after more than four years of heavy fighting over the country’s largest city.
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