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According to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a deal has been reached through which Syrian government forces will protect the Kurdish-held towns of Kobani and Manbij. US troops had been deployed in both towns since they were cleared of "Islamic State" (IS) militants in 2015. However, last week US President Donald Trump made the surprise announcement that he was pulling the US military out of Kurdish Syria, leaving a key US ally in the fight against IS vulnerable to the Turkish army. Turkey, which has been fighting an off-and-on insurgency from armed Kurdish groups in its own...

In the latest of a series of revelations, the Turkish authorities have allegedly been providing electricity to Tel Abyad -- a northern Syrian city just across the border from the Turkish city of Akçakale -- which is controlled by militants linked to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). More stunning is the not-so-secret presence of ISIL militants on the streets of Akçakale, in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa, a reporter with the Birgün daily claimed in a piece published on Friday. His account echoes many other reports, revealing the risks Turkey is facing as fighting between Kurdish...

Syrian refugees today broke through a barbed wire fence in a desperate bid to flee from the ISIS-held border town of Tal Abyad and cross into Turkey. Turkish troops had watched on helplessly yesterday as heavily-armed ISIS terrorists blocked the border crossing at Tal Abyad, where some 13,000 civilians have crossed over the past ten days. The men, women and children were stopped at gunpoint almost within touching distance of the border town of Akcakale. However, today - backed by allied rebels and air strikes by a U.S.-led coalition - Kurdish forces pressed forward with their offensive on Tal Abyad...

Recently, the Kurdish Peshmerga won a major victory against the Islamic State group in northern Syria, taking back a town known as Tal Abyad. Amazingly, the Obama administration took credit for this hard-fought victory, even though it had next to nothing to do with it. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the Kurdish victory was “actually a direct consequence of an earlier military operation that President Obama ordered” to break the siege of the Syrian city of Kobani last fall. This laughable claim was quickly shot down by the Kurds themselves, who stated that they could have taken the town back much more...

ISTANBUL — A battle in the northern Syrian border town of Tal Abyad has inflicted a potentially crippling defeat on ISIS that could impede the jihadists’ rampage through Syria and Iraq. But U.S. ally Turkey is not happy about it. In fact, Ankara is accusing Washington of foul play. Some in Turkey want their own military—which is part of NATO—to intervene on Syrian soil, and not against ISIS.

Kurdish forces battled Monday to cut a key Islamic State supply line by seizing the border town of Tal Abyad, as terrified Syrians poured into Turkey to escape the fighting. Forces from the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) backed by Syrian rebels advanced on the southeastern edge of the border town overnight, backed by US-led strikes against IS fighters, a monitor said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Kurdish forces had seized the Mashur Tahtani area on the southeastern edge of Tal Abyad, with the US-led coalition carrying out at least five strikes overnight. "The strikes are paving the...

VIDEO: 6 minutes After the Islamist AKP party cruised to defeat in last weekend’s parliamentary elections, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government announced the border would be closed to Syrians fleeing ISIS as “there is no longer a humanitarian tragedy,” in the words of Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş. Kurtulmuş further claimed Wednesday that people were “fleeing strikes by coalition forces and the progress of Kurdish fighters in the region.” He laid blame not on the Islamic State but on the anti-ISIS coalition for driving Syrian refugees into Turkey with “reasonless and meaningless” airstrikes. More than 13,000 Syrian refugees fled across...

BEIRUT — The Islamic State was routed Monday from one of its key strongholds on Syria’s border with Turkey after its defenses crumbled and its fighters either defected or fled, raising new questions about the group’s vaunted military capabilities. The fall of the town of Tal Abyad to a Kurdish-Syrian rebel force backed by U.S. airstrikes came after just two days of fighting during which the militants appeared to put up little resistance, focusing instead on escaping to their nearby self-styled capital of Raqqa or fleeing across the border to Turkey. The force — led by Kurdish units of the...

AKCAKALE, Turkey—A quick and successful offensive by Kurdish fighters and allied rebels in a northern Syrian town has boosted a U.S.-backed effort to choke off Islamic State’s supply routes. Emboldened by this week’s recapture of Tal Abyad on the Turkish border, Syrian Kurdish fighters and allied rebels said their next target is Raqqa, Islamic State’s main stronghold about 50 miles south of Tal Abyad. On Monday, these fighters said they had already begun to advance southward toward Raqqa, reaching the town of Ain Issa, only about 30 miles away. “Now that we have just completed clearing Tal Abyad and the...

CNN) -- ISIS has apparently taken a heavy hit over the past several days. The bodies of at least 70 fighters for the terror group have been dropped off over four days at a hospital in the Syrian town of Tal Abyad, a Syrian opposition group told CNN. Tal Abyad is on the Turkish border and about 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Raqqa.