BEIRUT -- Syrian rebels aided by U.S.-led airstrikes launched an offensive against an Islamic State stronghold near the Iraqi border on Tuesday, hoping to sever one of the extremists' main routes between the two countries, a rebel spokesman said.
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Mozahem al-Saloum, the spokesman for the New Syrian Army group, said the operation will be coordinated with Iraqi tribesmen and Iraqi forces battling the Islamic State on the other side of the border.
"The time has come to punish all those who were unjust to children and women, those who executed or tortured men and women," the New Syrian Army said in a statement. It called on residents of the Syrian border town of Boukamal to stay away from Islamic State positions during the operation.
Al-Saloum said warplanes from the U.S.-led coalition conducted several airstrikes Tuesday afternoon in preparation for a ground offensive.
"Our aim is to cut Syria from Iraq" by capturing Boukamal and surrounding areas, al-Saloum said.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the New Syrian Army fighters are close to Boukamal, where the Islamic State has been on high alert and shops are closed amid fears of violence. Observatory chief Rami Abdurrahman said the New Syrian Army has several hundred fighters and recently joined forces with another rebel group known as the Eastern Lions.
Omar Abu Leila, a Europe-based activist from Deir el-Zour province, where the fighting is taking place, said the New Syrian Army and the Islamic State clashed near Boukamal and that some militant commanders were fleeing the town because of the airstrikes.
The Islamic State opened much of the border when it swept into Iraq from Syria in 2014, seizing territory and declaring an Islamic caliphate. It has since shuttled fighters and weapons between the two countries.
In northern Syria, meanwhile, government forces captured farms near the city of Aleppo, tightening its hold on areas around the rebel-held parts of the city.
The Observatory, which relies on a network of activists across Syria, said government forces now control half the Mallah farms on the northeastern edge of Aleppo, Syria's largest city and former commercial center.
The Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV said those gains allow government troops to effectively close the Castello road, the last remaining link between rebel-held parts of Aleppo and the rest of the country.
State media aired footage from the area, showing Syrian army tanks and artillery pounding Mallah farms. Aleppo has experienced some of Syria's worst fighting this year.
Elsewhere, Lebanese troops detained 103 Syrians for illegal entry into the country in a security sweep Tuesday, a day after a series of deadly bombings in a village near the Syrian border, the military said.
The government warned of a mounting security challenge in Lebanon, underlining the magnitude of Monday's attack in which nine bombings, eight of them from suicide attackers, hit the small Christian village of Qaa, killing five people and wounding about 30.
"The attack on the Lebanese national security and the unfamiliar manner in which it was executed usher in a new kind of phase in the state's confrontation with the dark forces of terrorism," a Cabinet statement said.
Tuesday was declared a national day of mourning, and authorities postponed funerals for those who were killed in Monday's bombings, citing security concerns.
Information for this article was contributed by Sarah El Deeb of The Associated Press.
A Section on 06/29/2016