Al-Qaida splinter group closes in on Syrian city
This photo provided by the anti-government activist group Aleppo Media Center (AMC), which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows Free Syrian Army fighters running at one of the front lines in the town of Sheikh Najjar, in Aleppo, Syria, Tuesday June 10, 2014. Fighting in eastern Syria between Islamic rebel brigades and an al-Qaida splinter group has killed more than 630 people and uprooted at least 130,000 since the end of April, an activist group said Tuesday.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
BEIRUT -- The al-Qaida breakaway group that seized much of Iraq's northern city of Mosul has encircled the city of Deir el-Zour across the border in Syria, activists said Wednesday.
"They have surrounded the city. There are no entrances or exits left for people to flee," said a Syrian activist in the region who has contacts inside Deir el-Zour and who uses the name Salar. The information was confirmed by a second activist who uses the name Abu Abdullah, and who is based near Deir el-Zour.
The city, which straddles the Euphrates River in the northeastern corner of Syria, is one of the oil-rich region's last strongholds of resistance to the Islamic State.
Their control runs some 175 miles eastward across the Euphrates, from the northeast provincial capital of Raqqa to the town of Busayra in the province of Deir el-Zour, said Abu Abdullah. From there, they are some 62 miles from the Syrian town of Bukamal on the border with Iraq.
Their control extends upward through another province known as Hassakeh that borders Turkey. But they do not control a string of Kurdish-dominated border towns, Salar said.
Across Syria, in the northern province of Aleppo, a rebel coalition dominated by Islamic factions announced a new push to dislodge Islamic State fighters from their strongholds in the towns of Manbij and al-Bab, and surrounding villages.
The announcement was reported by the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists and other sources inside Syria.
Details on the scale of the new offensive were not immediately known. But one of the groups in the coalition, the Islamic Front, claimed that its fighters recently captured four villages from the Islamic State and killed 17 of its fighters.
The infighting is part of broader rebel-on-rebel clashes that have raged across opposition-held northern Syria since early January. The rebel infighting has killed some 6,000 people -- civilians and fighters -- since January, according to the Observatory.
The new offensive appears to have begun late Monday, said an Aleppo-based activist who uses the name Abu al-Hassan.
A Section on 06/12/2014