WESTERN-backed insurgents in northern Syria clawed back some ground from Islamic State (Isis) yesterday after losing a village to Kurdish militia.
The Turkish- and Saudi-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) recaptured the villages of Kafr Shoush and Braghida, which lie east of its beleaguered stronghold of Azaz in the north of Aleppo province, gaining a desperately needed buffer between the town and Isis extremists.
A sudden Isis conterattack on Thursday night rapidly overwhelmed the disparate FSA factions and cut the Azaz pocket near the Turkish border in two, leaving Marea to the south cut off and facing imminent capture.
Turkey and the US responded with artillery barrages and air strikes against Isis forces but these were reported to have backfired on Saturday night when jets hit an FSA unit, killing seven of its fighters in a “friendly fire” incident.
On Saturday the Kurdish YPG militia, whose territory around Afrin borders Azaz to the west, seized the village of Sheikh Issa to the west of Marea.
The YPG claimed yesterday its fighters had taken the town peacefully to “support our brothers in Marea against Isis.”
But the YPG, supported by the US Defence Department, had previously come close to overrunning the Azaz pocket in February after the Syrian army cut it off from the rebel-held east of Aleppo city.
In Damascus yesterday the army, backed by Hezbollah and the Palestine Liberation Army militia, crossed the Barada River into rebel-held east Ghouta and entered the town of Al-Nashabiya for the first time since 2012, beating back Faylaq Al-Rahman extremists.
