Setback to Islamic State reported

Turkey says the group no longer controls the border with Syria.

BEIRUT — For Islamic State, the 500-mile border between Syria and Turkey has been the main gateway for arms and foreign fighters entering its self-proclaimed caliphate.

Jihadis would f ly to Istanbul, Turkey, then travel to remote hamlets in southern Turkey to be smuggled into Syria.

But that passageway has now been cut off by Syrian rebels and Turkish-backed Islamic factions that snatched a 54-mile strip of territory Sunday, Turkish officials and rebels said.

“The Turkish border with Syria was cleared Sunday of Daesh,” the Turkish state news agency Anadolu reported, using Islamic State’s Arabic acronym. The gains came 12 days after Turkey announced an offensive.

The newly seized territory stretches between the cities of Jarabulus and Azaz in northwestern Syria and includes the border town of Rai, which for the last two years has flipped back and forth between Islamic State and rebel control.

Anadolu reported that factions collectively known as the Free Syrian Army — a loose-knit group whose members say they espouse a secular non-Islamist vision for the country and have received Western support — now control a belt of land extending two to three miles inside the country.

One group, the Be Upright As You Were Commanded Brigades, posted a YouTube video showing its members storming positions near Rai.

But the effort also included the hard-line Islamist faction, Faylaq Al-Sham, which said Sunday on Twitter that its fighters were responsible for linking border territory west of Jarabulus with areas east of Rai.

Such collaboration speaks to the complexity of Syria’s war. Rebel groups have common enemies in Islamic State and President Bashar Assad’s government — which are also fighting each other — but different backers and goals.

Bulos is a special correspondent.