U.S.-backed forces capture Islamic State-held town

BEIRUT — A U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led militia on Tuesday drove Islamic State militants from a northern Syrian town where the extremists had once run a training camp named for Osama Bin Laden.

The Syrian Democratic Forces have been advancing against Islamic State on both sides of the Euphrates River Valley in Syria while battling the group for control of its de facto capital, Raqqa, with U.S. air and ground support.

The SDF captured alUkayrshi, 9 miles southeast of Raqqa and once home to a sprawling jihadist military installation, said spokesman Mustafa Bali.

The Islamic State-run Aamaq news agency reported only that the militants had blown up a car bomb in the town Monday, killing 11 Kurdish fighters.

The militant group is reported to have killed more than 200 of its own members in al-Ukayrshi in 2015, suspecting that they had defected to a rival faction, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Also Tuesday, hundreds of Syrians arrived to their hometown, Homs, by bus, after electing to return to living under government authority instead of under the auspices of Turkey in north Syria.

Homs Governor Talal Barazi said some 630 residents had returned to the al-Waer neighborhood in Homs from Jarablus after finding conditions there too difficult. Jarablus is controlled by Turkish troops and allied Syrian forces.

More than 20,000 residents evacuated al-Waer this spring after rebels holding the neighborhood agreed to surrender it back to the control of the government. Those who left included fighters and their families, activists fearing retribution at the hands of the government authorities, and military-age men refusing conscription into the military.