ISIS forces seize villages in Syria

Rebels pushed out near Turkish border; thousands trapped

Lt. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi of the Russian Military General Staff said Friday in Moscow that U.S. “foot-dragging” on attacking the Nusra Front could lead to a collapse of the peace process and more fighting in Syria.
Lt. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi of the Russian Military General Staff said Friday in Moscow that U.S. “foot-dragging” on attacking the Nusra Front could lead to a collapse of the peace process and more fighting in Syria.

BEIRUT -- Islamic State militants on Friday seized a string of villages from Syrian rebels near the Turkish border in rapid advances that forced the evacuation of a hospital and trapped tens of thousands of people amid heavy fighting, Syrian opposition activists and an international medical organization said.

The advances in the northern Aleppo province brought the militants to within 2 miles of the rebel-held town of Azaz and cut off supplies to Marea farther south, another rebel stronghold north of Aleppo city.

They also demonstrated the Islamic State's ability to stage major offensives and capture new areas despite a string of recent losses in Syria and Iraq. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict through a network of activists on the ground, said Friday's advance was the biggest by the Islamic State in Aleppo province in two years.

Human Rights Watch said about 165,000 civilians are trapped near the Turkish border as a result of the fighting. Turkey has closed its borders with Syria for the past 15 months, and rights group say Turkish border guards enforcing the closure have at times shot at and assaulted Syrian asylum seekers as they try to reach safety in Turkey -- claims the Turkish government denies.

"While the world speaks about fighting ISIS, their silence is deafening when it comes to the basic rights of those fleeing ISIS," Gerry Simpson, senior researcher with the rights group's refugee program, wrote in a dispatch. The Islamic State is sometimes referred to by an alternative acronym, ISIS.

The Islamic State offensive began Thursday night. By Friday, the group had captured six villages east of Azaz including Kaljibrin, cutting off rebels in Marea from the Azaz pocket.

The rebels in the area -- who include mainstream opposition fighters known as the Free Syrian Army along with some ultraconservative Islamic insurgent factions -- have been squeezed between the Islamic State to the east and predominantly Kurdish forces to the west and south, while Turkey restricts the flow of goods and people through the border.

The Islamic State news agency, Aamaq, also reported the advance, saying Islamic State militants seized six villages from the rebels.

The medical charity Doctors Without Borders said its team is currently evacuating patients and staff members from the Al Salama hospital, which it runs in Azaz, after the front line shifted to within 2 miles of the facility.

The group, known by its French acronym MSF, said a small skeleton team will remain behind to stabilize and refer patients to other health facilities in the area.

"MSF has had to evacuate most patients and staff from our hospital as front lines have come too close," said Pablo Marco, operations manager for the Middle East. "We are terribly concerned about the fate of our hospital and our patients, and about the estimated 100,000 people trapped between the Turkish border and active front lines.

"There is nowhere for people to flee to as the fighting gets closer," he said.

Al Salama hospital is the largest of six medical facilities run by Doctors Without Borders in Syria.

Azaz, which hosts tens of thousands of internally displaced people, lies north of Aleppo city, which has been divided between a rebel-held east and government-held west.

A route known as the Azaz corridor links rebel-held eastern Aleppo with Turkey. That has been a lifeline for the rebels since 2012, but a government offensive backed by Russian air power and regional militias earlier this year dislodged rebels from parts of Azaz and severed their corridor.

Doctors Without Borders and other aid organizations warned earlier this month that the humanitarian situation for the tens of thousands of people trapped in the Azaz rebel-held pocket was critical.

On Thursday, Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. envoy for Syria, said he plans for a resumption of peace talks "as soon as feasible" between the government and opposition but that he set no new date and expects that it will "certainly not" come within the next two to three weeks, his office said.

The lack of a firm date for negotiations testifies to continued violence in Syria and difficulties for U.N. efforts to ship humanitarian aid to beleaguered Syrians as fighting rages between President Bashar Assad's troops and their allies and rebel fighters. The talks were suspended last month with little to no progress.

Russia's Defense Ministry on Friday accused the U.S. of inaction against the al-Qaida's branch in Syria, contributing to an escalation of fighting. The Russians had proposed last week that Russia and the U.S.-led anti-Islamic State coalition launch joint action against the Nusra Front, but the U.S. military said its contacts with Russia are only to maintain airspace safety in the crowded skies over Syria.

Lt. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi of the Russian military's General Staff said the U.S. refusal to consider joint action against the Nusra Front is leading "to further escalation of the military conflict."

Rudskoi said the situation in the provinces of Aleppo and Idlib has considerably worsened recently as "Nusra leaders sought to undermine the reconciliation process." He said the group has managed to replenish supplies and seize several villages, taking advantage of the fact that Russian warplanes haven't targeted areas where moderate opposition units are located close to Nusra positions.

"Further foot-dragging by our U.S. partners on the issue of separation of opposition units they control from terrorists don't only discredit the so-called 'moderate opposition,' but could lead to the collapse of the peace process and the resumption of fighting in Syria," he told reporters at a briefing.

Elsewhere in Aleppo, more than 30 people -- including 10 children -- were killed in airstrikes on the rebel-held towns of Anadan and Hraytan just north of Aleppo city, opposition activists said.

Information for this article was contributed by Jamey Keaten and Vladimir Isachenkov of The Associated Press.

A Section on 05/28/2016

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