The Jim Bakker Show

Turkey fires on U.S.-backed Kurdish militia in Syria offensive

Turkish army tanks and military personnel are stationed in Karkamis on the Turkish-Syrian border in the southeastern Gaziantep province, Turkey,

By Humeyra Pamuk and Umit Bektas

KARKAMIS, Turkey (Reuters) – Turkish troops fired on U.S.-backed Kurdish militia fighters in northern Syria on Thursday, highlighting the complications of an incursion meant to secure the border region against both Islamic State and Kurdish advances.

Syrian rebels backed by Turkish special forces, tanks and warplanes entered Jarablus, one of Islamic State’s last strongholds on the Turkish-Syrian border, on Wednesday.

But President Tayyip Erdogan and senior government officials have made clear the aim of “Operation Euphrates Shield” is as much about stopping the Kurdish YPG militia seizing territory and filling the void left by Islamic State as it is about eliminating the ultra-hardline Islamist group itself.

A Turkish security source said the army shelled the People’s Protection Units (YPG) south of Jarablus. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu agency described the action as warning shots.

Gunfire and explosions echoed around hills in the region on Thursday, a day after the incursion first began.

Some of the blasts were triggered as Turkish security forces cleared mines and booby traps left by retreating Islamic State militants, according to Nuh Kocaaslan, the mayor of Karkamis, which sits just across the border from Jarablus. He said three Turkish-backed Syrian rebels were killed but no Turkish troops.

Turkey, which has NATO’s second biggest armed forces, demanded that the YPG retreat to the east side of the Euphrates river within a week. The Kurdish militia had moved west of the river earlier this month as part of a U.S.-backed operation, now completed, to capture the city of Manbij from Islamic State.

Ankara views the YPG as a threat because of its close links to Kurdish militants waging a three-decade-old insurgency on its own soil. It has been alarmed by the YPG’s gains in northern Syria since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, fearing it could extend Kurdish control along Turkish borders and fuel the ambitions of Kurdish insurgents in Turkey.

Turkey’s stance has put it at odds with Washington, which sees the YPG as a rare reliable ally on the ground in Syria, where Washington is trying to defeat Islamic State while also opposing President Bashar al-Assad’s government in a complex, multi-sided, five-year-old civil war.

The Syrian Kurdish force is one of the most powerful militias in Syria and regarded as the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a U.S.-backed alliance formed last October to fight Islamic State.

Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isik said the Kurdish PYD party, the political arm of the YPG, wanted to unite Kurdish-controlled cantons east of Jarablus with those further west. “We cannot let this happen,” he said.

“Islamic State should be completely cleansed, this is an absolute must. But it’s not enough for us … The PYD and the YPG militia should not replace Islamic State there,” Isik told Turkish broadcaster NTV.

EUPHRATES

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu by phone on Thursday that YPG fighters were retreating to the east side of the Euphrates, as Turkey has demanded, foreign ministry sources in Ankara said.

A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State said the SDF had withdrawn across the Euphrates, doing so “to prepare for the eventual liberation” of Raqqa, the radical group’s stronghold which lies further east.

Isik said the retreat was not yet complete and Washington had given assurances that this would happen in the next week.

“If the PYD does not retreat to east of the Euphrates, we have the right to do everything about it,” the minister said.

The offensive is Turkey’s first major military operation since a failed July 15 coup shook confidence in its ability to step up the fight against Islamic State. It came four days after a suicide bomber suspected of links to the group killed 54 people at a wedding in the southeastern city of Gaziantep.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, who met Erdogan during a trip to Turkey on Wednesday, said Turkey was ready to stay in Syria for as long as it takes to destroy the radical Islamist group.

“I think there has been a gradual mind shift … in Turkey, with the realization that ISIL is an existential threat to Turkey,” he told reporters during a visit to Sweden, using an acronym for the militant group.

A Turkish official said the ground incursion had been in the works for more than two years but had been delayed by U.S. reservations, resistance from some Turkish commanders, and a stand-off with Russia which had made air cover impossible.

Turkey had made the case more strongly to Washington over the past few months, had patched up relations with Russia, and had removed some of the Turkish commanders from their posts after finding they were involved in the coup attempt, paving the way for the operation to go ahead, the official said.

The incursion comes at a testing time for Turkish-U.S. relations. Erdogan wants the United States to extradite Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania for 17 years and whose religious movement Turkey blames for staging last month’s failed coup.

Washington says it needs clear evidence of Gulen’s involvement and that it is a matter for the courts, a position that has sparked an outpouring of anti-Americanism from Turkey’s pro-government media. Gulen denies any role in the coup attempt.

REBELS ADVANCE

The sound of gunfire, audible from a hill on the Turkish side of the border overlooking Jarablus, rang out on Thursday and black smoke rose over the town. War planes flew overhead.

A senior Turkish official said there were now more than 20 Turkish tanks inside Syria and that additional tanks and construction machinery would be sent in as required. A Reuters witness saw at least nine tanks enter on Thursday, and 10 more were waiting outside a military outpost on the Turkish side.

“We need construction machinery to open up roads … and we may need more in the days ahead. We also have armored personnel carriers that could be used on the Syrian side. We may put them into service as needed,” the official said.

Erdogan said on Wednesday that Islamic State had been driven out of Jarablus and that it was now controlled by Turkish-backed Syrian rebels, who are largely Arab and Turkmen.

“The myth that the YPG is the only effective force fighting Islamic State has collapsed,” Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin wrote on Twitter, reflecting Turkish frustration at how closely Washington has been working with the Kurdish militia.

Saleh Muslim, head of the Kurdish PYD, said on Wednesday that Turkey was entering a “quagmire” in Syria and faced defeat there like Islamic State. Redur Xelil, spokesman for the YPG, said the intervention was a “blatant aggression in Syrian internal affairs”.

After seizing Jarablus, the Turkish-backed rebels have advanced up to 10 km (6 miles) south of the border town, rebel sources and a group monitoring the war said.

But the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said Kurdish-backed forces opposed by Ankara had gained up to 8 km of ground northwards, apparently seeking to pre-empt advances by the rebels.

(Additional reporting by Orhan Coskun and Ece Toksabay in Ankara; Can Sezer, David Dolan, Cagan Uslu and Asli Kandemir in Istanbul, Tom Perry in Beirut, Jeff Mason in Stockholm; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Edmund Blair, Pravin Char and Peter Graff)

Slow EU aid puts Syrian children’s lives on hold in Turkey

Muhammed Mazin Mekansi poses with his family at their home in Ankara

By Dasha Afanasieva

ANKARA (Reuters) – Their faces so burned by a rocket blast they cannot fully close their eyes, 13-year-old Gheis Mekansi and his sister Limar, both Syrian refugees, wait in limbo in Turkey for surgery they need to return to life and school.

A year and a half after they were caught in the attack on an opposition-controlled area of Damascus, the siblings may become victims again as 3 billion euros ($3.4 billion) in aid promised by the European Union has been held up by political wrangling and red tape.

Gheis has six months to wait for facial reconstruction and needs prosthetic fingers available in Europe but not in Turkey. Until then, he and his sister stay indoors, unwilling to go outside where others laugh and stare at their disfigured faces.

“I just want to get my real face back,” Gheis said sitting next to his mother and sister in the small apartment they share in an Ankara suburb filled with Syrian refugee families.

In return for billions in cash for refugees taken in from Syria, visa liberalization and revitalized EU accession, Turkey has agreed to cooperate in stopping migrants crossing the Aegean Sea to Greece and take back those who do not qualify for asylum.

However, months after the deal was signed the EU now expects 182 million euros will have been disbursed by the end of August.

Asked why so little money had been put to use, an EU official pointed to the vast scale of the program, as well as the need to ensure that NGOs earmarked to receive the aid are up to the task.

But last month’s attempted coup in Turkey has also heightened tensions between Ankara and Brussels. Angry Turkish officials perceive a lack of sympathy from Western officials and last month President Tayyip Erdogan questioned the EU’s commitment to promises made in the migrant deal.

One Turkish NGO director who did not want to be named said disagreements between the EU and Turkey were partly to blame for delays in payments.

“The government’s perception is that the EU side is using this money as a political tool instead of wanting it to go to refugees,” he said, adding that the government does not trust the NGOs partnered with the EU.

Two government officials declined to comment, while a presidency official said only that it was important for the EU to live up to its side of the deal.

MONEY WAITING TO BE SPENT

Turkey says it is now host to 2.72 million Syrian refugees, plus tens of thousands of asylum seekers, including Iraqis and Afghans who are fleeing violence in their homelands.

It has argued it would be easier to give the money directly to the government – something the EU rejects, saying it always channels humanitarian aid through specialized agencies and non-governmental institutions so it goes directly to those in need.

However the EU official said that some NGOs in Turkey are unused to the needs and extraordinary scope of the current refugee crisis, and may lack capacity, meaning that extra checks and preparation are needed before the money is disbursed.

In the past ECHO, the European Commission’s aid arm, would typically spends around 1 billion euros backing humanitarian projects globally every year. This year it may spend that in Turkey alone.

Far from EU and Turkish bureaucracy and diplomatic tensions, Gheis and his six-year old sister Limar look at a photograph of their brother Muhammed, who died after an agonizing 10 days in hospital following the rocket attack.

Photographs showing the children building a snowman in happier times are stark contrast to their lives since the blast. In the three months Limar and Gheis were in hospital they underwent four operations each but are still unrecognizable. Gheis has no fingers and Limar can’t breathe properly.

Kerem Kinik, president of the Turkish Red Crescent, told Reuters he expected EU funds would allow children like Gheis and Limar to go to special schools and get treatment faster.

“We were expecting UN agencies and Europe to build up new capacities for at least primary health care but unfortunately we could not receive contributions.”

While Gheis’ family is getting some support from a local NGO, aid workers say there are thousands of devastated families with serious medical problems not receiving adequate help.

Muhammed Elhacmansur and his wife Meryem Elseyh hope to get their four-year-old son Ali, who was blinded by a landmine as the family fled Islamic State, to Europe for an operation to give him back his sight. Four of Ali’s siblings were killed in the explosions.

“We didn’t have any time to even bury them and gather their pieces on the field,” 42-year old Muhammed said.

While Turkey does not officially grant Syrians refugee status, a temporary protection status, in theory, allows them access to healthcare and education for children at least in Turkish. But these efforts cannot make Ali see.

“I don’t need food or clothes or any things,” Ali’s mother said. “I just want my son to recover.”

($1 = 0.8833 euros)

(Additional reporting by Gabriela Baczynska in Brussels and Orhan Coskun in Ankara; editing by Patrick Markey and Dominic Evans)

Iran says Russian use of air base for Syria strikes over ‘for now’

Still image shows shows airstrikes carried out by Russian air force in Syria

By Bozorgmehr Sharafedin

DUBAI (Reuters) – Russia has stopped using an Iranian air base for strikes in Syria, Iran’s foreign ministry announced on Monday, bringing an abrupt halt to an unprecedented deployment that was criticized both by the White House and some Iranian lawmakers.

Last week long-range Russian Tupolev-22M3 bombers and Sukhoi-34 fighter bombers used Nojeh air base, near the city of Hamadan, in north-west Iran to launch air strikes against armed groups in Syria.

It was the first time a foreign power used an Iranian base since World War Two. Russia and Iran are both providing crucial military support to President Bashar al-Assad against rebels and jihadi fighters in Syria’s five-year-old conflict.

Some Iranian lawmakers called the move a breach of Iran’s constitution which forbids “the establishment of any kind of foreign military base in Iran, even for peaceful purposes”.

Iranian Defence Minister Hossein Dehghan dismissed that criticism but also chided Moscow for publicizing the move, describing it as showing off and a “betrayal of trust.”

“We have not given any military base to the Russians and they are not here to stay,” Dehghan was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency late on Sunday.

He said there was “no written agreement” between the two countries and the “operational cooperation” was temporary and limited to refueling.

The U.S. state department last week called the move “unfortunate but not surprising,” and said it was looking into whether it violated UN Security Council resolution 2231, which prohibits supply, sale and transfer of combat aircraft to Iran.

ABRUPT END

On Monday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said that Russia’s use of the base has ended.

“Russia has no base in Iran and is not stationed here. They did this (operation) and it is finished for now,” Bahram Qasemi was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency.

Iran’s defense minister had said last week that Russia will be permitted to use the Nojeh base “for as long as they need”.

Relations between the two countries, long cordial, appeared to reach a new level last September when Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a military intervention in Syria in support of Assad.

After some delay, Russia supplied Iran with its S-300 missile air defense system, evidence of a growing partnership that is testing U.S. influence in the Middle East.

Dehghan said that to make up for the delay, Russia had suggested providing Iran with its advanced S-400, but that Tehran was not interested as it is working to advance its own home-made defense system.

Iran unveiled its new missile defense system, Bavar 373, on Monday, a system designed to intercept cruise missiles, drones, combat aircraft and ballistic missiles.

Iran’s defense minister also said Tehran has shown interest in buying Russian Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets and Moscow’s reply “has not been negative so far.”

The United States has said it would use its veto power in the United Nations’ Security Council to block the possible sales of the fighter jets to Iran.

(Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Editing by Dominic Evans)

Islamic State pulls families out of towns in Syrian north

A Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) fighter inspects a room, which according to the SDF was used by Islamic State militants to prepare

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Islamic State fighters have evacuated their families from a Syrian town at the Turkish border near a city that they recently lost to U.S.-backed militias, a monitor group said on Friday, a sign they may be preparing to face an attack there.

Last week’s capture by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) of Manbij, 25 miles (40km) to their south, has left Islamic State fighters in Jarablus in danger of being cut off from the militant group’s main territorial possessions.

The town is located at the eastern edge of an Islamic State salient stretching 33 miles (55km) along the Turkish border, and could be encircled by any SDF thrust northwards from its positions further to the west. SDF positions on the Euphrates already look directly across to Jarablus on the opposing bank.

More than 50 families of Islamic State fighters and leaders arrived in the group’s stronghold of Raqqa from Jarablus and the larger town of al-Bab, between Manbij and Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based war monitor, said.

Separately, a senior Syrian rebel source told Reuters that Islamic State was moving personnel out of Jarablus.

The SDF have not yet declared what their next target will be after capturing Manbij. A successful advance north could cut Islamic State off from the Turkish border, while a thrust west could threaten al-Bab, an important Islamic State stronghold.

After Manbij fell to the SDF, some local fighters announced they had established a military council for al-Bab, signaling they believed an assault on Islamic State in the town would soon take place. The SDF denied having any links to the council.

The U.S.-backed SDF is made up of both Kurdish fighters, including the YPG militia, and local Arab armed groups. It has denied any links to a military council established last week.

(Writing by Tom Perry)

Russia launches third day of Syria strikes from Iran

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian bombers launched a third day of air strikes against militants in Syria from an Iranian air base, the Russian defense ministry said on Thursday.

The ministry said Tu-22M3 long-range bombers and Su-34 fighter bombers struck Islamic State targets in the Syrian province of Deir al-Zor.

It said the military aircraft had taken off from bases in both Russia and Iran and destroyed six command posts and a large number of fighters and military equipment.

All the Russian planes returned to base after the strikes, the defense ministry said.

(Reporting by Alexander Winning; Editing by Maria Kiselyova)

Harrowing video shows dazed, bloodied boy pulled from Aleppo rubble

(Reuters) – His face bloodied and completely covered in dust, the little boy sits quietly, staring ahead, dazed and shocked after an apparent air strike in the Syrian city of Aleppo.

Alone in an ambulance, the boy – identified by doctors as five-year-old Omran Daqneesh – tries to wipe the blood off his head, unaware of the injury he has sustained.

Video of children being pulled from the rubble of a building hit by air strikes in Aleppo has been widely circulated on social media, causing upset and condemnation over the harrowing reality of Syria’s five-year war.

Aleppo, split into rebel- and government-controlled areas, has become the focus of fighting in Syria’s five-year conflict.

Rebel-held areas are suffering heavy air strikes daily as pro-government forces try to retake territory lost to rebels two weeks ago in the southwest of Aleppo.

The video was shot on Wednesday in the rebel-held al-Qaterji neighborhood of the city.

It shows an aid worker carrying the little boy out of a building and placing him on a seat inside an ambulance, before rushing back out to the bombed-out scene. The boy sits alone, stunned, before two more children are brought into the vehicle. A man with blood on his face then joins them.

Last year, international sympathy for victims of Syria’s war was heightened by a photo of a drowned 3-year-old refugee from Syria, Alan Kurdi, washed up on a Turkish tourist beach. The image of Aylan, who died when a people smugglers’ boat taking his family and other refugees to a nearby Greek island capsized, swept across social media and was retweeted thousands of times.

(This version of the story has been refiled to corrects spelling of boy’s name in last paragraph)

(Reporting by Reuters Television and Beirut newsroom; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Russia, spurning U.S. censure, launches second day of Syria strikes from Iran

By Alexander Winning and Andrew Osborn

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia launched a second day of air strikes against Syrian militants from an Iranian air base, rejecting U.S. suggestions its co-operation with Tehran might violate a U.N. resolution as illogical and factually incorrect.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner on Tuesday called the Iranian deployment “unfortunate,” saying the United States was looking into whether the move violated U.N. Security Council resolution 2231, which prohibits the supply, sale and transfer of combat aircraft to Iran.

Russia bristled at those comments on Wednesday after announcing that Russian SU-34 fighter bombers flying from Iran’s Hamadan air base had for a second day struck Islamic State targets in Syria’s Deir al-Zor province, destroying two command posts and killing more than 150 militants.

“It’s not our practice to give advice to the leadership of the U.S. State Department,” Major-General Igor Konashenkov said in a statement.

“But it’s hard to refrain from recommending individual State Department representatives check their own logic and knowledge of basic documents covering international law.”

Moscow first used Iran as a base from which to launch air strikes in Syria on Tuesday, deepening its involvement in the five-year-old Syrian civil war and angering the United States.

Russia’s use of the Iranian air base comes amid intense fighting for the Syrian city of Aleppo, where rebels are battling Syrian government forces backed by the Russian military, and as Moscow and Washington are working toward a deal on Syria that could see them cooperate more closely.

Russia backs Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while the United States believes the Syrian leader must step down and is supporting rebel groups that are fighting to unseat him.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday any U.S. dismay over Moscow’s military co-operation with Iran should not distract from efforts to realize the U.S.-Russia deal on coordinating action in Syria and securing a ceasefire.

Lavrov said there were no grounds to suggest Russia’s actions had violated the U.N. resolution, saying Moscow was not supplying Iran with military aircraft for its own internal use, something the document prohibits.

“These aircraft are being used by Russia’s air force with Iran’s agreement as a part of an anti-terrorist operation at the request of Syria’s leadership,” Lavrov told a Moscow news conference, after holding talks with Murray McCully, New Zealand’s foreign minister.

A graphic illustrating which targets Russia has so far struck from Iran can be seen here: http://tmsnrt.rs/2b458P3

(Additional reporting by Denis Pinchuk; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Russia uses Iran as base to bomb Syrian militants for first time

A still image, taken from video footage and released by Russia's Defence Ministry on August 16, 2016, shows a Russian Tupolev Tu-22M3 long-range bomber based in Iran dropping off bombs at an unknown location in Syria. Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation/

By Andrew Osborn

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia used Iran as a base from which to launch air strikes against Syrian militants for the first time on Tuesday, widening its air campaign in Syria and deepening its involvement in the Middle East.

In a move underscoring Moscow’s increasingly close ties with Tehran, long-range Russian Tupolev-22M3 bombers and Sukhoi-34 fighter bombers used Iran’s Hamadan air base to strike a range of targets in Syria.

It was the first time Russia has used the territory of another nation, apart from Syria itself, to launch such strikes since the Kremlin launched a bombing campaign to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in September last year.

It was also thought to be the first time that Iran has allowed a foreign power to use its territory for military operations since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

The Iranian deployment will boost Russia’s image as a central player in the Middle East and allow the Russian air force to cut flight times and increase bombing payloads.

The head of Iran’s National Security Council was quoted by state news agency IRNA as saying Tehran and Moscow were now sharing facilities to fight against terrorism, calling their cooperation strategic.

Both countries back Assad, and Russia, after a delay, has supplied Iran with its S-300 missile air defense system, evidence of a growing partnership between the pair that has helped turn the tide in Syria’s civil war and is testing U.S. influence in the Middle East.

Relations between Tehran and Moscow have grown warmer since Iran reached agreement last year with global powers to curb its nuclear program in return for the lifting of U.N., EU and U.S. financial sanctions.

President Vladimir Putin visited in November and the two countries regularly discuss military planning for Syria, where Iran has provided ground forces that work with local allies while Russia provides air power.

TARGET: ALEPPO

The Russian Defence Ministry said its bombers had taken off on Tuesday from the Hamadan air base in north-west Iran. To reach Syria, they would have had to use the air space of another neighboring country, probably Iraq.

The ministry said Tuesday’s strikes had targeted Islamic State as well as militants previously known as the Nusra Front in the Aleppo, Idlib and Deir al Zour provinces. It said its Iranian-based bombers had been escorted by fighter jets based at Russia’s Hmeymim air base in Syria’s Latakia Province.

“As a result of the strikes five large arms depots were destroyed … a militant training camp … three command and control points … and a significant number of militants,” the ministry said in a statement.

The destroyed facilities had all been used to support militants in the Aleppo area, it said, where battle for control of the divided city, which had some 2 million people before the war, has intensified in recent weeks.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based war monitor, said heavy air strikes on Tuesday had hit many targets in and around Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria, killing dozens.

Strikes in the Tariq al-Bab and al-Sakhour districts of northeast Aleppo had killed around 20 people, while air raids in a corridor rebels opened this month into opposition-held eastern parts of the city had killed another nine, the observatory said.

The Russian Defence Ministry says it takes great care to avoid civilian casualties in its air strikes.

Zakaria Malahifi, political officer of an Aleppo-based rebel group, Fastaqim, said he could not confirm if the newly deployed Russian bombers were in use, but said air strikes on Aleppo had intensified in recent days.

“It is much heavier,” he told Reuters. “There is no weapon they have not dropped on Aleppo – cluster bombs, phosphorus bombs, and so on.”

Aleppo, Syria’s largest city before the war, is divided into rebel and government-held zones. The government aims to capture full control of it, which would be its biggest victory of the five year conflict.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians are believed to be trapped in rebel areas, facing potential siege if the government closes off the corridor linking it with the outside.

Russian media reported on Tuesday that Russia had also requested and received permission to use Iran and Iraq as a route to fire cruise missiles from its Caspian Sea fleet into Syria, as it has done in the past.

Russia has built up its naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean and the Caspian as part of what it says are planned military exercises.

Russia’s state-backed Rossiya 24 channel earlier on Tuesday broadcast uncaptioned images of at least three Russian Tupolev-22M3 bombers and a Russian military transport plane inside Iran.

The channel said the Iranian deployment would allow the Russian air force to cut flight times by 60 percent. The Tupolev-22M3 bombers, which before Tuesday had conducted strikes on Syria from their home bases in southern Russia, were too large to be accommodated at Russia’s own air base inside Syria, Russian media reported.

(Additional reporting by Polina Devitt, Bozorgmehr Sharafedin, Angus McDowall and Thomas Perry; Editing by Peter Graff)

U.S.-backed forces in final sweep against Islamic State in Syria’s Manbij

A woman embraces a Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) fighter after she was evacuated with others by the SDF from an Islamic State-controlled neighbourhood of Manbij

BEIRUT (Reuters) – U.S.-backed forces battling Islamic State near the Turkish border in northern Syria said on Friday they had launched a final assault to flush the remaining jihadists out of the city of Manbij.

The Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), with air support from a U.S.-led coalition, said last week they had taken almost complete control of Manbij, where a small number of IS fighters had been holed up.

The SDF’s offensive, which began at the end of May, aims to remove Islamic State from areas it controls along the Turkish border, which was for years a route through which the group moved fighters and weapons.

The SDF said it was now conducting a final sweep of the city before they officially announce the operation is complete.

Friday’s attack is “the last operation and the last assault,” said Sharfan Darwish, a spokesman for the Syrian Arab and Kurdish forces.

Darwish said roughly 100 Islamic State fighters were left in the center of the city, and that they were using civilians as human shields. Several civilians were killed trying to flee, he said.

Reuters pictures showed residents being released from an Islamic State-held neighborhood on Friday and being welcomed by SDF forces.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors Syria’s five-year conflict, later said around 500 cars had left Manbij carrying Islamic State members and civilians. They were heading northeast toward Jarablus, a town under Islamic State control on the Turkish border, the Observatory said.

The convoy carried the final Islamic State members leaving the city, under an agreement between the fighting parties that would not be announced officially, the Observatory said, marking the end of the operation.

The SDF could not immediately be reached for comment on that report.

The SDF’s campaign quickly captured the countryside surrounding Manbij, but slowed once fighting entered the city. The SDF said it had been avoiding a large-scale assault inside Manbij out of concern for civilians.

Dozens of people were killed in suspected U.S. coalition air strikes last month, residents and monitors said.

(Reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi, John Davison and Lisa Barrington; Editing by Larry King and Robin Pomeroy)

Intensifying fight for Aleppo chokes civilian population

A Free Syrian Army tank fires in Ramousah area, southwest of Aleppo, Syria

By John Davison

BEIRUT (Reuters) – An upsurge of intense fighting around Aleppo has killed dozens of Syrians in the past weeks, displaced thousands and cut water and power to up to two million people on both sides of the front line, worsening the already dire conditions faced by hundreds of thousands in the city.

In a war already marked by humanitarian crisis, the United Nations says the fighting threatens to replicate deprivation recently suffered by those in rebel-held eastern districts of Aleppo among civilians living in the government-held west.

Advances by warring sides in the last month, which resulted in a siege of rebel-held neighborhoods and the severing of a major route into government areas of control, have choked off supplies and raised fears of the encirclement of the entire civilian population.

Syria’s largest city pre-war has been divided into government and rebel areas of control for much of the conflict, and has been the focus of escalating violence since a ceasefire brokered by Washington and Moscow in February crumbled. Its capture would a major prize for President Bashar al-Assad.

Russia’s intervention last year helped turn the war in Assad’s favor. His forces with the help of Lebanese Hezbollah and Iranian fighters surrounded the eastern, opposition-held neighborhoods in Aleppo in July.

The latest major gains were made by rebels, however, who broke the month-long government siege in an attack last week on a Syrian military complex and also cut the main supply route to the western, government-held areas of the city.

“When the attack began … rockets and shells were fired toward Hamdaniya,” said Abu George, a resident who fled that neighborhood, close to the military complex in the southwest of the city.

“There were people who had already been displaced sheltering in nearby areas, they had to leave,” the 61-year-old agricultural engineer said via telephone.

Rebel bombardments of Hamdaniya on Wednesday killed more than a dozen people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said. Syrian and Russian warplanes have launched heavily raided the areas taken by insurgents.

The British-based group said bombardments by both sides have killed more than 120 people in the city since the beginning of August.

Abu George is among thousands who fled areas in southwest Aleppo in recent days, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

“Thousands of families have been displaced from southwestern Aleppo, including already displaced families who’ve had to move for a second time,” spokeswoman Ingy Sedky said.

Residents of western Aleppo said cutting the main supply route to the government side had slowed the entry of goods and fuel and driven up food prices, but a delivery by government forces via an alternative route this week provided some relief.

“There were some problems with petrol and fuel, but supplies came in and the petrol stations are open and working,” Tony Ishaq, 26, said via internet messenger.

The alternative route used was until last month the only road into Aleppo’s opposition held sector. After intense bombardment, government forces captured the Castello Road in an advance that put eastern Aleppo under siege.

HOSPITALS HIT, WATER AND POWER CUT

The siege worsened an already dire humanitarian situation in eastern Aleppo, residents and doctors said.

The rebel advance which broke through the siege on Saturday has not yet secured a safe enough passage to make more than one food delivery to the east, or for civilians to move through, with government bombardments hitting that rebel corridor on the city’s southwestern outskirts.

“Fuel, vegetables and other essentials are not entering because the regime is bombing areas it lost like crazy,” said Hossam Abu Ghayth, a 29-year-old east Aleppo resident.

“There are warplanes and helicopters hovering in the skies, they’re bombing both civilian areas and the major front lines,” he said via internet messenger.

International medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, which supports a number of medical facilities in the opposition held sector, said the casualty toll had risen sharply.

“Because of the bombings and the fighting in Aleppo city there are more and more people coming to the hospitals,” Middle East Operations Manager Pablo Marco told Reuters.

Hospitals were having to cope with dozens of wounded arriving at the same time, he said, with only 35 doctors for the whole of east Aleppo’s population at least 250,000 people.

All eight hospitals supported by MSF have been affected by bombardments in recent months, Marco said. A U.S.-based rights group says several hospitals were hit in July.

The bombardments have compounded water and power cuts on both sides of the city.

East Aleppo residents have long experienced a lack of both.

“There’s no electricity – there are generators which provide a small amount, enough to work a fridge or lighting,” Abu Ghayth said.

“We wash once every Friday. We’ve got used to living this way,” he said. “We economize water so it lasts.”

Entire families often survive on 50 liters of water per day, transported from tanks or drawn from wells, he added. The World Health Organization says 20 liters are needed per person for basic hygiene.

The United Nations said on Tuesday the main power facility that allowed water to be pumped to both sides of the city had been hit, leaving the entire population of nearly 2 million without running water and putting children at risk of disease.

Sedky of the ICRC said residents were relying on underground water sources.

“The water pumping stations are not working anymore, on boths sides. So the whole population has been relying on boreholes for water,” she said.

Fetching water from those boreholes in some areas was dangerous, with movement restricted because of bombardments and fighting, Sedky added.

Wells and tanks would not provide enough water for very long, she said.

The U.N. has called for an urgent humanitarian ceasefire in Aleppo, and is pushing for a resumption of peace talks that have failed to end the five-year conflict in which more than 250,000 people have been killed and some 11 million displaced.

(Reporting by John Davison)

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