ISIS town near Islamist capital falls to Kurds
In this photo taken from the Turkish side of the border between Turkey and Syria, in Akcakale, Sanliurfa province, southeastern Turkey, smoke from a US-led airstrike rises over the outskirts of Tal Abyad, Syria, Sunday, June 14, 2015. Syrian Kurdish fighters closed in on the outskirts of a strategic Islamic State-held town on the Turkish border Sunday, Kurdish officials and an activist group said, potentially cutting off a key supply line for the extremists’ nearby de facto capital. Taking Tal Abyad, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa, would mean the group wouldn’t have a direct route to bring in new foreign militants or supplies. AP
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Backed by U.S.-led airstrikes and buoyed by battlefield successes, Kurdish fighters kept up an offensive through northern Syria on Tuesday, driving Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants out of a town near the extremists’ de facto capital of Raqqa.
The capture of Ein Issa came just hours after the Kurdish forces had overrun a nearby military base, increasing the pressure on the Islamic State group less than two weeks after it lost the strategically located town of Tal Abyad on the Turkish border, severing a vital supply line.
The advances by the Kurdish fighters in Syria as well as in northern Iraq has been credited largely to a high level of coordination between the ground forces and the nearly year-old air campaign being led by Washington against ISIS.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest called the success by the Kurds “an indication of how critically important it is for the United States to have a capable, willing and effective partner fighting ISIL on the ground.”
That was why the U.S. was dedicating “significant resources” to building up opposition forces, he said. That work was “a more difficult task” in Syria than Iraq, but that “this is a pretty good illustration of why that very difficult work is important,” Earnest added.
Ein Issa is only 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Raqqa, the stronghold of the ISIS’s self-declared caliphate that spans parts of Syria and Iraq.
