US-backed fighters brave sandstorm to battle IS
BEIRUT, Oct 11, (Agencies): US-backed fighters braved a sandstorm to battle the Islamic State group in eastern Syria on Thursday in heavy clashes that killed several fighters on both sides.
The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led group, said it was fighting to retake the village of Sousah, where the extremists took advantage of the poor visibility to launch a counteroffensive.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting began Wednesday and killed at least 10 USallied fighters, with the fate of 35 others unknown. It said 18 IS militants were killed.
The IS-linked Aamaq news agency reported 18 deaths among the SDF fighters and posted photos online of what it said were some of the bodies.
In recent years the SDF, with US air support, has driven IS from much of northern and eastern Syria. The extremists have also suffered a series of defeats at the hands of Syrian government forces and Iraqi forces, losing virtually all the territory that once made up their self-styled caliphate.
Sousah is in one of the last pockets of territory held by IS, which has put up stiff resistance. The advancing SDF has had to contend with mines, sniper fire and suicide attacks.
Thousands of Syrians stranded on Jordan’s border with Syria are running out of food as routes leading to their camp are closed by the Syrian army and Jordan is blocking aid deliveries, relief workers and refugees said on Thursday.
The Syrian army has tightened its siege of the camp, in Rukban, near the northeastern Jordanian border with Syria and Iraq, preventing smugglers and traders from delivering food to its 50,000 inhabitants, mostly women and children.
“More than a week ago the Syrian regime cut all the routes of supplies towards the camp. There are now only very small amounts of food that smugglers bring,” Abu Abdullah, the head of the civil affairs council that runs the camp, told Reuters.
“The camp is a balloon that could explode at any moment because of hunger, sickness and lack of aid ... if the situation continues like this there will be real starvation,” he added by phone.
In the last three years, tens of thousands of people have fled to the camp from Islamic State-held parts of Syria that were being targeted by Russian and US-led coalition air strikes.
Rukban is located near a US garrison in southeastern Syria at Tanf on the Iraqi-Syrian border. The camp falls within a socalled deconfliction zone set up by the Pentagon with the aim of shielding the Tanf garrison from attacks by pro-Assad forces.
Damascus says the US forces are occupying Syrian territory and providing a safe-haven in that area for rebels it deems terrorists.
Jordan has since the start of the year blocked any aid deliveries to the camp over its frontier and says now that the Syrian government had recovered territory around the camp, it could not be made responsible for delivering aid.
With Damascus intransigent, UN aid agencies have been pressing Jordan to let in urgent deliveries to stave off more deaths, aid workers and diplomatic sources said.
The UN children’s agency UNICEF warned on Thursday that without “critical action” by parties to the conflict to “allow and facilitate access” the lives of thousands of children in the camp were at risk.
“The situation for the estimated 45,000 people – among them many children – will further worsen with the cold winter months fast approaching, especially when temperatures dip below freezing point in the harsh desert conditions,” Geert Cappelaere, UNICEF regional director for Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement.
Already two more infants died in the last 48 hours, Cappelaere added. Relief workers inside the camp say a woman also died this week.
Jordan wants the United Nations and Russia to put pressure on Damascus to give the written authorizations needed to allow supplies into Rukban from Syrian government-held territory.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said recently that his country, already burdened with hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing war-torn Syria, could not be made responsible for delivering aid to the camp.
Western diplomatic sources believe the siege of the camp is part of a Russian-backed Syrian government effort to put pressure on Washington to get out of Tanf.
The deal between Turkey and the United States regarding the northern Syrian town of Manbij is delayed “but not completely dead”, President Tayyip Erdogan was quoted as saying by Hurriyet newspaper on Thursday.
Turkey and the United States reached a deal in May over Manbij after months of disagreement. Under the deal, the Kurdish YPG militia would withdraw from Manbij and Turkish and US forces would maintain security and stability around the town.
Erdogan told reporters on Tuesday during his flight back from a visit to Hungary that the implementation of the deal had been delayed.
“There is a delay but (the deal) is not completely dead. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mattis say they will take concrete steps,” Erdogan was quoted as saying by Hurriyet.
The NATO allies have been carrying out coordinated but independent patrols in the region as part of the deal.
On Tuesday, Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar was quoted by staterun Anadolu news agency as saying that joint training of US and Turkish soldiers for patrols in Manbij had begun.
Washington’s support for the YPG militia in the fight against the Islamic State group has infuriated Ankara, which sees the YPG as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
The PKK, considered a terrorist group by the United States, the European Union and Turkey, has waged a three-decade insurgency in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast.
Ankara fears advances by the YPG in Syria will embolden Kurdish militants at home.
Relations between Turkey and the United States were further strained over the past few months by the trial of US evangelical pastor Andrew Brunson in Turkey on terrorism charges, which he denies.
Asked about Brunson’s trial, Erdogan said he was not in a position to interfere with the judiciary.
“Whatever the judiciary decides on, I have to abide by that decision. Those who are involved with this also need to abide by the judiciary’s decision,” Erdogan was quoted as saying by Hurriyet.
The next session in Brunson’s trial will be held on Friday. The trial sparked a row between Ankara and Washington that helped send the lira down around 40 percent against the dollar this year.
The US said Wednesday it will refuse any post-war reconstruction assistance to Syria if Iran is present, expanding the rationale for US involvement in the conflict.
Secretary of State Pompeo, speaking to a pro-Israel group, vowed an aggressive push to counter Iran across the Middle East and said that Syria was a decisive battleground.
“The onus for expelling Iran from the country falls on the Syrian government, which bears responsibility for its presence there,” Pompeo told the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.
“If Syria doesn’t ensure the total withdrawal of Iranian-backed troops, it will not receive one single dollar from the United States for reconstruction,” Pompeo said.
Pompeo’s speech effectively broadens the official explanation for why the United States is involved in Syria’s civil war, which a monitoring group says has killed close to 365,000 people since 2011.
Former president Barack Obama authorized military action with the goal of rooting out the Islamic State group, or ISIS, the extremist force that has boasted of a slew of grisly attacks both in Syria and the West.
The United States has about 2,000 troops in Syria, primarily to train and advise forces other than ISIS that are waging an increasingly precarious fight to topple President Bashar al-Assad.
Pompeo acknowledged that Assad was stronger thanks to Iranian and Russian help and said that, with ISIS “beaten into a shadow of its former self,” new priorities had emerged.
“Defeating ISIS, which was once our primary focus, continues to be a priority. But it will now be joined by two other mutually reinforcing objectives,” Pompeo said.