Tag Archives: Islamic State

U.S. to send more troops to Iraq ahead of Mosul offensive

Kurdish Peshmerga forces gather in a village east of Mosul, Iraq,

By Yeganeh Torbati and Stephen Kalin

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The United States is stepping up its military campaign against Islamic State (IS) by sending hundreds more troops to assist Iraqi forces in an expected push on Mosul, the militants’ largest stronghold, later this year.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter made the announcement on Monday during a visit to Baghdad where he met U.S. commanders as well as Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Defence Minister Khaled al-Obeidi.

Most of the 560 troop reinforcements will work out of Qayara air base, which Iraqi forces recaptured from Islamic State and plan to use as a staging ground for an offensive to retake Mosul, Iraq’s second biggest city.

Government forces said on Saturday they had recovered the air base, about 60 km (40 miles) from the northern city, with air support from the U.S.-led military coalition.

“With these additional U.S. forces I’m describing today, we’ll bring unique capability to the campaign and provide critical support to the Iraqi forces at a key moment in the fight,” Carter told a gathering of U.S. troops in Baghdad.

The latest force increase came less than three months after Washington announced it would dispatch about 200 more soldiers to accompany Iraqi troops advancing toward Mosul.

Carter told reporters ahead of Monday’s trip that the United States would now help turn Qayara into a logistics hub.

The airfield is “one of the hubs from which … Iraqi security forces, accompanied and advised by us as needed, will complete the southernmost envelopment of Mosul,” he said.

The recapture of Mosul, Islamic State’s de facto Iraqi capital from which its leader declared a modern-day caliphate in 2014, would be a major boost for Abadi and U.S. plans to weaken IS, which has staged attacks in the West and inspired others.

Two years since Islamic State seized wide swathes of Iraq and neighboring Syria in a lightning offensive, the tide has begun to turn as an array of forces lined up against the jihadists have made inroads into their once sprawling territory.

IS has increasingly resorted to ad hoc attacks including a bombing in the Iraqi capital last week that left nearly 300 people dead – the most lethal bombing of its kind since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have touted such bombings as proof that battlefield setbacks are weakening Islamic State, but critics say a global uptick in suicide attacks attributed to the group suggests the opposite.

“In fact, it demonstrates (Islamic State’s) strength and long-term survival skills,” terrorism expert Hassan Hassan wrote in a recent article. “The threat is not going away.”

REPAIRS NEEDED

A senior U.S. defense official said Qayara air base would be “an important location for our advisers, for our fire support, working closely with the Iraqis and being closer to the fight.”

Carter compared its strategic importance to that of a base near Makhmour, a hub for Iraqi forces on the opposite side of the Tigris river that is also used by U.S. troops. A U.S. Marine was killed in Makhmour in March when it was shelled by IS.

U.S. forces had already visited Qayara to check on its condition and advisers can offer specialized engineering support in Mosul, where Islamic State has blown up bridges across the Tigris, U.S. officials said.

Iraqi forces were already improving the base’s perimeter in case of a counterattack from the nearby town of Qayara which IS still holds, another U.S. official in Baghdad said.

Islamic State has suffered a number of territorial losses in recent months including the Syrian town of al-Shadadi, taken by U.S.-backed Syrian forces in February, and the Iraqi recapture of Ramadi in December and Falluja last month.

Abadi has pledged to retake Mosul by the end of the year.

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)

At least 35 killed in attack on Shi’ite mausoleum north of Baghdad

Soldiers gather at site of suicide attack

TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) – Islamic State claimed a triple suicide attack on Thursday evening near a Shi’ite mausoleum north of Baghdad, which killed at least 35 people and wounded 60 others, according to Iraqi security sources.

The attack on the Mausoleum of Sayid Mohammed bin Ali al-Hadi reignited fears of an escalation of the sectarian strife between Iraq’s Shi’ites and Sunnis.

The Shi’ite form a majority in Iraq but Sunnis are predominant in northern and western provinces, including Salahuddin where the mausoleum is located.

Prominent Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr ordered his militia, the Peace Brigade, to deploy around the mausoleum, near Balad, about 93 kilometers (58 miles) north of Baghdad.

Sadr’s militia is also deployed in Samarra, a nearby city that houses the shrine of Imam Ali al-Hadi, the father of Sayid Mohammed whose mausoleum was attacked on Thursday.

A 2006 bombing destroyed the golden dome of the shrine of Ali al-Hadi and his other son, Imam Hasan al-Askari, setting off a wave of sectarian violence akin to a civil war.

Pictures posted on social media showed a fire burning in the market located at the entrance of the Sayid Mohammed mausoleum. It was not clear if the site itself was damaged.

A man detonated an explosive belt at the external gate of the mausoleum at around 11 p.m., allowing several gunmen to storm the site and start shooting at worshippers on the occasion of the Eid al-Fitr festival, according to the security sources.

At least one gunmen blew himself up in the middle of the crowd while another was gunned down by the guard of the mausoleum before he could detonate his explosive belt.The site also came under rocket fire during the attack that was claimed by Islamic State. The ultra-hardline Sunni group said in a statement the attack was carried out by three suicide bombers wearing explosive belts.

The militants have lost ground since last year to U.S.-backed government forces and Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias, but recent bombings showed they still have the ability to strike outside the territory they control in northern and western Iraq.

A massive truck bomb killed at least 292 people in a mainly Shi’ite shopping area of central Baghdad over the weekend, in the deadliest single bombing since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.

(Reporting by Ghazwan Hassan and Ahmed Rasheed; Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by G Crosse and Leslie Adler)

Baghdad bombing death toll rises to 292

Iraqi women light candles as they mark the end of Ramadan at the site of a suicide car bomb

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The death toll from a suicide bombing in Baghdad this weekend has reached 292, Iraq’s Health Ministry said on Thursday.

The attack, claimed by the militant group Islamic State, which government forces are trying to eject from large parts of the north and west of the country, was the deadliest bombing in Iraq since U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein 13 years ago.

More than 200 people were wounded in the attack in a busy shopping street in the mainly Shi’ite Karrada district of central Baghdad. About 23 of the wounded were still in hospital, health ministry spokesman Ahmed al-Rudaini told Reuters.

Earlier on Thursday, the ministry had put the toll at 281 and it rose as more people, registered as missing, were identified as dead, Rudaini said.

(Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Islamic State: Dhaka Cafe slaughter a glimpse of what’s coming

Policemen sneak a look inside the Holey Artisan Bakery and the O'Kitchen Restaurant as others inspect the site after gunmen

By Ruma Paul

DHAKA (Reuters) – Islamic State has warned of repeated attacks in Bangladesh and beyond until rule by sharia, Islamic law, is established, saying in a video last week’s killing of 20 people in a Dhaka cafe was merely a glimpse of what is to come.

Five Bangladesh militants, most from wealthy, liberal families, stormed the upmarket restaurant on Friday and murdered customers, the majority of them foreigners, from Italy, Japan, India and the United States, before they were gunned down.

“What you witnessed in Bangladesh … was a glimpse. This will repeat, repeat and repeat until you lose and we win and the sharia is established throughout the world,” said a man identified as Bangladeshi fighter Abu Issa al-Bengali, in the video monitored by SITE intelligence site.

Bangladesh has rejected the Islamic State’s claim of responsibility for the Friday attack and blamed it on a domestic militant group.

It was one of the deadliest attacks in Bangladesh, where Islamic State and al Qaeda have claimed a series of killings of liberals and members of religious minorities in the past year. The government has also dismissed those claims.

The IS video began with pictures of recent attacks in Paris, Brussels and Orlando in the United States that the Middle East-based militants have claimed.

The fighter in the video, who spoke in both Bengali and English, said Bangladesh must know that it was now part of a bigger battlefield to establish the cross-border “caliphate” the group proclaimed in 2014.

“I want to tell the rulers of Bangladesh that the jihad you see today is not the same that you knew in the past,” he said from a busy street in the militant group’s de facto capital of Raqqa, in Syria.

“The jihad that is waged today is a jihad under the shade of the Caliphate.”

Though Bangladesh has rejected the IS claim of responsibility for Friday’s attack, police said they were stepping up security in response to the video threat.

“We are taking this issue seriously. All our concerned units are working tirelessly,” said deputy police inspector general Shahidur Rahman.

Police believe the domestic Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, which has pledged allegiance to Islamic State, played a significant role in organizing the band of privileged, educated young men who carried out the attack.

Police have said they are hunting for six members of the group suspected to have helped the attackers.

But foreign security experts say the scale and sophistication of the attack on the Holey Artisan bakery cafe pointed to some level of guidance from international militant groups.

Officials in Dhaka said on Tuesday police commandos had mistakenly shot dead a restaurant chef during the operation to end the siege.

H.T. Imam, a political adviser to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, also said security officials had seen online warnings about an impending attack on Friday and ordered major hotels and restaurants in the neighborhood of the cafe shut.

But they missed the actual target, he said.

(Writing by Sanjeev Miglani; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Turkey proposes cooperation with Russia in fighting Islamic State

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan makes a speech during an iftar event in Ankara, Turkey, June 27, 2016

By Ece Toksabay and Dmitry Solovyov

ANKARA/MOSCOW (Reuters) – Turkey said on Monday it wanted to cooperate with Moscow in combating Islamic State in Syria but denied having suggested it might allow Russia to use its Incirlik Air Base, near the Syrian frontier.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan last week expressed regret over last year’s shooting down of a Russian warplane, with the loss of the pilot. Moscow, which had broken off virtually all economic ties and banned tourists from visiting Turkish resorts, pledged in return to help rebuild relations.

In an interview with Turkish state television on Sunday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu had appeared to suggest Ankara could open up Incirlik to Russia, a move that could raise concern among Turkey’s NATO partners already using the base, including the United States.

But Cavusoglu, in comments broadcast live on television on Monday, denied such an interpretation of his words.

“We said that we could cooperate with Russia in the period ahead in the fight against Daesh (Islamic State)…I did not make any comment referring to Russian planes coming to the Incirlik Air Base.”

Incirlik hosts aircraft from the United States, Germany, Britain, Saudi Arabia and Qatar involved in the U.S.-led air campaign against Islamic State, which has controlled extensive territories along Syria’s border with Turkey.

“We will cooperate with everyone who fights Daesh,” he told TRT Haber in Sunday’s remarks. “We have been doing this for quite a while, and we opened Incirlik Air Base for those who want to join the active fight against Daesh.

“Why not cooperate with Russia as well on these terms? Daesh is our common enemy, and we need to fight this enemy.”

The Kremlin described the notion that Turkey could open up Incirlik as a “serious statement” although it said it had not had any contact with Ankara on the matter.

REVIVAL

Russia said it was looking to “revive” the sharing of information with Turkey in the fight against Islamic State.

“Channels to exchange information with Turkey have not been working lately. We now have to revive and relaunch them,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Last week’s bomb attack on the main airport Istanbul – which left 45 people dead and hundreds wounded – showed the importance of working together to counter terrorism, he said.

Russian nationals have been identified as two of the three suspected Islamic States suicide bombers behind the airport attack, which is thought to have been masterminded by a Chechen, Turkish media said on Friday.

The pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper has said the organiser of the attack, the deadliest in a series of suicide bombings in NATO-member Turkey this year, was suspected to be a Chechen double-amputee called Akhmed Chatayev.

Chatayev is identified on a United Nations sanctions list as a leader in Islamic State responsible for training Russian-speaking militants.

In many cases these fighters have been influenced by Islamist insurgencies at home, pushed out of their own countries by security crackdowns, and won advancement in Islamic State through their military skills and ruthlessness.

(Additional reporting by Daren Butler; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Ralph Boulton)

Iraqis want crack down on ‘sleeper cells’ after huge Baghdad bombing

Firemen inspect the site of a suicide car bomb in the Karrada shopping area, in Baghdad.

By Saif Hameed and Maher Chmaytelli

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The death toll from a suicide bombing in a Baghdad shopping district has risen to over 150, fueling calls for security forces to crack down on Islamic State sleeper cells blamed for one of the worst ever single bombings in Iraq.

Numbers rose as bodies were recovered from the rubble in the Karrada area of Baghdad, where a refrigerator truck packed with explosives blew up on Saturday night when people were out celebrating the holy month of Ramadan.

The toll in Karrada stood at 151 killed and 200 wounded by midday on Monday, according to police and medical sources. Rescuers and families were still looking for 35 missing people.

Islamic State claimed the attack, saying it was a suicide bombing. Another explosion struck in the same night, when a roadside bomb blew up in popular market of al-Shaab, a Shi’ite district in north Baghdad, killing two people.

The attacks cast a shadow over victory statements made last month by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s government, after Iraqi forces dislodged Islamic State from Falluja, the stronghold of the ultra-hardline Sunni insurgents near Baghdad.

Government officials ordered the offensive on Falluja in May after a series of deadly bombings in Shi’ite areas of Baghdad that they said originated from Falluja, about 50 km (30 miles) west of the capital.

“Abadi has to have a meeting with the heads of national security, intelligence, the interior ministry and all sides responsible for security and ask them just one question: How can we infiltrate these groups?” said Abdul Kareem Khalaf, a former police Major General who advises the Netherlands-based European Centre for Counterterrorism and Intelligence Studies think tank.

In a sign of public outrage at the failure of the security services, Abadi was given an angry reception on Sunday when he toured Karrada, the district where he grew up, with residents throwing stones, empty buckets and even slippers at his convoy in gestures of contempt.

He ordered new measures to protect Baghdad, starting with the withdrawal of fake bomb detectors that police have continued to use despite a scandal that broke out in 2011 about their sale to Iraq under his predecessor, Nuri al-Maliki.

The hand-held devices were initially developed to find lost golf balls, and the British businessman who sold them to Iraq for $40 million was jailed in Britain in 2013.

Abadi ordered that the fake devices be replaced by efficient detectors at the entrances to Baghdad and Iraq’s provinces.

Karrada, a largely Shi’ite district with a small Christian community and a few Sunni mosques, was busy at the time of the blast as people were eating out and shopping late during Ramadan, which ends this week with the Eid al-Fitr festival.

Falluja was the first Iraqi city to fall to Islamic State in January 2014. Abadi said the next target of the Iraqi forces is Mosul, the de facto capital of the militants and the largest city under their control in both Iraq and Syria.

(Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Dominic Evans)

Tunisian prisoners tell of life with Islamic State in Libya

Olfa, 39, mother of Rahma who is the wife of Nurdine Chouchan, who was killed during a U.S. air strike in Libya, reacts during an interview with Reuters in Tunisia

By Aidan Lewis and Ahmed Elumami

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – When a U.S. air strike hit Sabratha in western Libya on Feb. 19, it reduced a building on the southern fringes of the city to rubble, killing dozens of militants and exposing a network of Islamic State cells operating just near the Tunisian border.

It also upended the lives of three young Tunisian women who were married to militants killed in the strike or its aftermath, and are now being held with their children in a Tripoli prison.

The women’s accounts, given in a rare interview, shed light on how Islamic State was able to operate largely undisturbed in Sabratha as the cell’s mainly Tunisian members plotted attacks back in their home country.

It is also an illustration of how the militant group may continue to find space amid Libya’s turmoil even as it risks losing its stronghold of Sirte, another Libyan coastal city further to the east.

“We lived normally in the city, the neighbors knew us. We even went to the market and to the beauty salon,” said Rahma al-Shekhawi, the 17-year–old wife of Noureddine Chouchane, a senior commander who officials say was killed in the February strike.

Some militants stayed in Sabratha as they prepared to move on to Sirte or to Syria, but most were planning operations in Tunisia, she said. “They were buying weapons under the eyes of our neighbors.”

Local officials in Sabratha have long denied or played down Islamic State’s presence in the city and it was not possible to confirm those statements.

But U.S. and Tunisian officials say Chouchane played an important role in preparing two major attacks on tourists last year, first at a museum in Tunis and then on a beach in the resort city of Sousse, after which he became a wanted figure.

But in Sabratha “the authorities never came looking for us even though everyone knew where we lived,” she said. “It only changed after the strike.”

LOOSE STRUCTURE

Islamic State began expanding into Libya in late 2014, as fighters from the Libyan-dominated al-Battar battalion returned to the eastern city of Derna.

Over the following year, the group joined a military campaign in Benghazi, took full control of Sirte and carried out attacks in Tripoli, partly by merging with or recruiting local militants from the al Qaeda-linked group Ansar al Sharia.

Yet Islamic State failed to make the kind of rapid advances it achieved in the Middle East, struggling to raise revenue or win broad support in Libya’s fractured society.

Membership tilted increasingly towards foreign fighters, with Tunisians the most numerous, residents and officials say.

In Sirte, the group set up a proto-state that followed the model established in Iraq and Syria, taxing residents, enforcing strict rules over dress and education and carrying out regular public punishments including executions. It has since lost parts of the city to pro-government forces.

But in Sabratha, where Tunisians were especially dominant, there was a looser structure, the prisoners said.

“There was no leader in Sabratha, everyone did their own thing,” said Rahma al-Shekhawi, though she said the main focus was on expanding into Tunisia.

Rahma’s sister Ghofran, 18, also married to an Islamic State member, said militants in Sabratha were divided into cells that were ready to defy the group’s hierarchical structures.

“Each group had an emir who was working on his own strategy – some were making passports for Syria, some were working on Tunisia and others were working on Libya,” she said.

“They always asked for instructions from the emir in Syria, who told them to obey the emir in Sirte, but they refused and they took decisions by themselves.”

CLASHES

Only after February’s air strike did local Libyan brigades, known as “thuwar” (revolutionaries) because of their role in the 2011 uprising that toppled veteran leader Muammar Gaddafi, take on the Islamic State militants in their midst.

With planes circling over the city, residents began searching for militants partly because they feared further strikes, said Wahida Bin Mukhtar al-Rabhi, the third Tunisian prisoner.

Rabhi and her 2-year-old son, and Ghofran with her 5-month-old daughter, fled south towards the desert with their husbands.

Rabhi said they went without food for a day as they tried to arrange help to get to the nearby town of Zawiya.

“The clashes started, and my son Bara was hit by bullets in his stomach and back. At that point my husband started shouting, ‘there are women and children with us’, but the thuwar didn’t want to stop because they knew we were Islamic State and we might blow ourselves up.”

Rabhi said she was searched and beaten by the local brigades and then handed over to Tripoli’s Special Deterrence Force, who took her to identify her husband’s body.

Her son was given treatment in a local hospital before they were both brought to the prison in the capital where dozens of other Islamic State suspects are also held.

Despite their uncertain future in Libya, the women say they don’t want to return to Tunisia, where they suffered poverty and persecution for their Islamist beliefs.

“I want to be happy with my son, I want to get back to my life,” said Rabhi. “I don’t want my son to grow up in prison.”

(Editing by Gareth Jones)

U.N. Expects residents to start returning to Falluja by August

Destroyed vehicles from clashes are seen in Falluja, Iraq, after government forces recaptured the city from Islamic State militants

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The United Nations said Iraqi authorities will allow civilians displaced by the assault on Islamic State-held Falluja to start returning home as early as August.

More than 85,000 people fled their homes during a month-long campaign that ended on Sunday when Iraqi authorities declared they had completely recaptured the city, an hour’s drive west of Baghdad.

A report on Thursday from the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, noting the government’s plans, said the level of destruction will make their return difficult in the short term and explosives would pose a hazard to residents.

The civilians at government-run camps, who make up about a third of Falluja’s total population before Islamic State took over 2-1/2 years ago, are currently relying on handouts from the United Nations and aid groups.

Lack of funding means many do not have adequate shelter, food or water amid temperatures exceeding 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit). Humanitarian agencies fear poor sanitation could spread infectious diseases like cholera and skin diseases in addition to exacerbating chronic illnesses.

The head of Iraq’s Sunni endowment, a public institution that manages religious sites, delivered the first Friday sermon since the city’s recapture at a mosque inside Falluja. A few dozen worshippers, including senior military commanders and tribal sheikhs, were gathered there.

“I can see from liberated Falluja the gates of Nineveh open to you Iraqis, you fighters; enter them with your rifles as liberators,” Abdul Latif al-Humaim said in a live television broadcast.

Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province in the north and the largest city still controlled by Islamic State, is the top target in the government’s campaign against the militants who seized a third of Iraqi territory two years ago.

(Reporting by Stephen Kalin and Saif Hameed; Editing by Dominic Evans)

U.S. led strikes against Islamic State in Iraq, kill 250 fighters

A still image from video released by the Iraqi military on June 30, 2016 shows aerial infrared footage showing airstrikes on what the Iraqi military said was a convoy of Islamic State fighters fleeing Falluja

By Phil Stewart

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S.-led coalition aircraft waged a series of deadly strikes against Islamic State around the city of Falluja on Wednesday, U.S. officials told Reuters, with one citing a preliminary estimate of at least 250 suspected fighters killed and at least 40 vehicles destroyed.

If the figures are confirmed, the strikes would be among the most deadly ever against the jihadist group. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the operation and noted preliminary estimates can change.

The strikes, which the officials said took place south of the city, where civilians have also been displaced, are just the latest battlefield setback suffered by Islamic State in its self-proclaimed “caliphate” of Iraq and Syria.

The group’s territorial losses are not diminishing concerns about its intent and ability to strike abroad though. Turkey pointed the finger at Islamic State on Wednesday for a triple suicide bombing and gun attack that killed 41 people at Istanbul’s main airport.

CIA chief John Brennan told a forum in Washington the attack bore the hallmarks of Islamic State “depravity” and acknowledged there was a long road ahead battling the group, particularly its ability to incite attacks.

“We’ve made, I think, some significant progress, along with our coalition partners, in Syria and Iraq, where most of the ISIS members are resident right now,” Brennan said.

“But ISIS’ ability to continue to propagate its narrative, as well as to incite and carry out these attacks — I think we still have a ways to go before we’re able to say that we have made some significant progress against them.”

On the battlefield, the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State has moved up a gear in recent weeks, with the government declaring victory over Islamic State in Falluja.

An alliance of militias have also launched a major offensive against the militant group in the city of Manbij in northern Syria.

Still, in a reminder of the back-and-forth nature of the war, U.S.-backed Syrian rebels were pushed back from the outskirts of an Islamic State-held town on the border with Iraq and a nearby air base on Wednesday after the jihadists mounted a counter- attack, two rebel sources said.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; additional reporting by Warren Strobel in Washington; Editing by Chris Reese)

Islamic State forces Syria rebels to retreat from border area

Civilians inspect a site hit by an airstrike in the rebel-controlled city of Idlib

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi and Tom Perry

AMMAN/BEIRUT (Reuters) – U.S.-backed Syrian rebels were pushed back from the outskirts of an Islamic State-held town on the border with Iraq and a nearby air base on Wednesday after the jihadists mounted a counter- attack, two rebel sources said.

The New Syria Army rebel group had launched an operation on Tuesday aimed at capturing the town of Al-Bukamal from Islamic State.

One rebel source said Islamic State fighters had encircled the rebels in a surprise ambush. They had suffered heavy casualties and weapons had been seized by the jihadists, the source said.

“The news is not good. I can say our troops were trapped and suffered many casualties and several fighters were captured and even weapons were taken,” he said.

A spokesman of the New Syria Army, Muzahem al Saloum, confirmed the group’s fighters had retreated. “We have withdrawn to the outlying desert and the first stage of the campaign has ended,” Saloum told Reuters.

Despite the retreat, Saloum said the fighters had at least succeeded in evicting Islamic State from large swathes of desert territory around the town.

Islamic State affiliated Amaq news agency had earlier said it had killed 40 rebel fighters and captured 15 more in a counter-attack at the Hamadan air base north west of the city.

The operation aiming to capture Al-Bukamal was meant to add to pressure on Islamic State as it faces a separate, U.S.-backed offensive in northern Syria aimed at driving it away from the Turkish border.

The New Syria Army was formed some 18 months ago from insurgents driven from eastern Syria at the height of Islamic State’s rapid expansion in 2014. Rebel sources say it has been trained with U.S. support.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the group’s offensive against Islamic State was being mounted with the backing of Western special forces and U.S.-led air strikes.

Islamic State’s capture in 2014 of Al-Bukamal, just a few kilometers (miles) from the Iraqi frontier, effectively erased the border between Syria and Iraq. Losing it would be a huge symbolic and strategic blow to the cross-border “caliphate” led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State has moved up a gear this month, with an alliance of militias including the Kurdish YPG launching a major offensive against the militant group in the city of Manbij in northern Syria. In Iraq, the government this week declared victory over Islamic State in Falluja.

Syrian rebel sources say the rebel force has received military training in U.S.-run camps in Jordan, but most of their training was now being conducted in a main base at al-Tanf, a Syrian town southwest of Al-Bukamal at the border with Iraq.

The New Syria Army’s base in al-Tanf was hit twice earlier this month by Russian air strikes, even after the U.S. military used emergency channels to ask Moscow to stop after the first strike, U.S. officials say.

(Reporting by Tom Perry and Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Richard Balmforth)