THREE groups were fighting each other yesterday for control of the town of al-Bab in northern Syria.

Locals reported that US-backed Kurdish YPG militia clashed with factions of the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army east of Qabasin in the north of Aleppo province.

Despite a YPG announcement on Wednesday that it was withdrawing from the town of Manbij to the east, its “al-Bab Military Council” seized a string of villages to the west from the Isis death cult.

That brought them within two miles of Qabasin, north-east of al-Bab, where the FSA was repelling an Isis counter-offensive on the village seized earlier this week.

Further complicating matters, the Syrian army has massed some 5,000 troops at Kuweires air base, six miles south of al-Bab, apparently preparing to take the town.

Capturing al-Bab would allow the YPG to unite its two zones of control in northern Syria, which Ankara vowed to prevent when it invaded the province more than two months ago.

Turkey is determined to stop Kurdish advances, while it continues a bloody crackdown against Kurds within its own borders.

If al-Bab falls into FSA hands it could be used as a base for a new offensive against Aleppo city, a crucial objective in the war.

Further west in the border town of Azaz, bloody infighting between foreign-backed insurgents continued.

Two car bombs hit the HQ and and munitions dump of the brutal Nour al-Din al-Zinki, killing 28 of the Islamists and wounding dozens more.

Meanwhile Russian jets blew up three al-Qaida commanders in Idlib province.

Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said Muhammad Helala, Abu Jaber Harmuja and Abul Baha Al-Asfari were all “well known” leaders of the Levant Conquest Front, the rebranded al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front.

He said Mr Asfari was in charge of gathering sub-groups for a new offensive on Aleppo from the west.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest, accompanying President Barack Obama on a visit to Berlin, repeated his government’s condemnation of Russia for allegedly killing “innocent civilians” in air strikes on the eastern part of Aleppo, which is held by insurgents.

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