Terrorist group enters rebel stronghold in Syria

The extremists make gains near the Turkish border while losing ground in Iraq.

beirut» Islamic State terrorists entered a major Syrian opposition stronghold in the country’s north on Saturday, clashing with rebels on the edges of the town as the terrorist group builds on its most significant advance near the Turkish border in two years — even as it loses ground elsewhere in the country and in neighboring Iraq.

The town of Marea, just north of Aleppo city, has long been considered a bastion of relatively moderate Syrian revolutionary forces fighting to topple Assad. The Islamic State assault underlined the weakness of the groups fighting under the loose banner of the so-called Free Syrian Army that have been struggling to survive.

More than 160,000 civilians have been trapped by the fighting, which also forced the evacuation of one of the few remaining hospitals in the area, run by the international medical organization Doctors Without Borders.

On Saturday, the Islamic State staged two suicide bombings targeting “opposition forces” near Marea, the terrorist group said via its news agency, Aamaq.

After the suicide bombings, the terrorists entered Marea and fighting began inside the town, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based opposition media outfit that tracks Syria’s civil war.

Dr. Abdel Rahman Alhafez, who heads one of the last remaining hospitals in Marea, said the town was encircled and his hospital under threat since Friday. “We need urgent protection for the hospital or a way out,” he said in an emailed statement.

Syrian army warplanes and helicopters, meanwhile, pounded other opposition-held towns in Aleppo province on Saturday, putting a further strain on embattled rebels fighting President Bashar Assad’s forces.

Islamic State’s territorial gains around Marea and Azaz, both critical rebel bastions north of Aleppo, are a blow to the Turkey- and Saudi-backed opposition fighters who have been struggling to retain a foothold in the region while being squeezed by opponents from all sides. 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.

American Special Operations forces and a coalition of Syrian and Arab fighters known as the Syria Democratic Forces have begun clearing areas north of Raqqa, the Islamic State’s de facto capital in Syria, in preparation for an eventual assault on the city.

The Islamic State on Thursday night began its offensive targeting Syrian opposition strongholds near the Turkish border.

On Friday, the terrorists captured six villages near Azaz, triggering intense fighting that trapped tens of thousands of civilians unable to flee to safety while Turkey’s border remains closed. A few hundred fled west to the Kurdish-held enclave of Afrin.

People are “terrified for their lives,” the International Rescue Committee said in a statement. The group said it has received confirmed reports that at least four entire families, including women and children, were killed Friday on the outskirts of Azaz.

The IRC runs centers for both children and women in Azaz and provides clean water and sanitation to a camp supporting 8,500 people. More than half the camp’s population has left to find safety elsewhere in the town, it said. The IRC also relocated its staff f to safer areas of Azaz.

The U.N. refugee agency said it was “deeply concerned” about the fighting affecting thousands of vulnerable civilians.

“Fleeing civilians are being caught in crossfire and are facing challenges to access medical services, food, water and safety,” it said in a statement Saturday.

World powers — including the United States and Russia, which support opposing sides in Syria’s civil war — are at a loss as to how to jumpstart peace talks which collapsed in Geneva earlier this year. The war, now in its sixth year, has killed more than a quarter of a million people and displaced half the country’s population.