ISIS- SYRIA-THREAD

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Voice of America

More Strikes Pound Islamic State Targets in Syria, Iraq

U.S. jets and remotely piloted drones, along with planes from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, hit Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq Saturday, U.S. military officials said.

The attacks were latest in the U.S.-led effort to rollback Islamic State, which has presented a formidable fighting force that has seized swaths of Iraq and worried nations across Europe and the Middle East.

In Syria, allied aircraft hit seven sites, including an Islamic State vehicle near Al-Hasakah, along with several garrison buildings and a command and control facility near Manbij. Another building and two armed vehicles near Kobani were also destroyed, the Defense Department said in a statement.

An airfield, a garrison and a training camp near Raqqa, an Islamic State stronghold, were also hit.

Three airstrikes in near Irbil, in Iraq, meanwhile, destroyed four Islamic State vehicles and destroyed a fighting position, the department said.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported 31 massive explosions in Raqqa, and casualties were reported.

Explosions were heard also near al-Etihad University in Aleppo province, an Islamic State headquarters, and areas east of the desert town of Palmyra in Homs province.

U.S. jets, bombers, drones and ship-launched missiles have been pounding Islamic State targets for days now, along with allied Arab forces.

French jets have also conducted strikes, and on Friday, the list of participating militaries grew as Britain, Denmark and Belgium announced they would join the effort. Britain carried out its first combat mission in Iraq Saturday, but the Ministry of Defense said no targets were identified as requiring immediate air attack. Australia and the Netherlands are also participating.

Turkey Gets Involved

Turkey’s president said Turkish troops could be used to set up a secure zone in Syria, if there was an international agreement to establish such a haven for refugees fleeing Islamic State fighters

Turkey, a NATO member, has been struggling to balance its interests in preventing further destabilization from Syria. A 11-day assault by militants on Kobani, a Syrian town also known as Ayn al-Arab, has sent 160,000 refugees across the border into Turkey since last week in the biggest such exodus in 3-and-a-half years of civil war. Hundreds of Kurdish fighters inside Turkey have also poured into the Syrian town to defend it.

Activists and Kurdish officials on Saturday said Islamic State fighters fired rockets into Kobani. At least 12 people were reported wounded in the rocket attacks, while no immediate casualty estimates were released for the coalition strikes.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said negotiations were underway to determine how and by which countries the airstrikes and a potential ground operation would be undertaken, and that Turkey is ready to take part.

"In the distribution of responsibilities, every country will have a certain duty. Whatever is Turkey's role, Turkey will play it," he was quoted as saying said by the Hurriyet newspaper.

"You can't finish off such a terrorist organization only with airstrikes. Ground forces are complementary ... You have to look at it as a whole. Obviously I'm not a soldier but the air [operations] are logistical," he said. “If there's no ground force, it would not be permanent.”

On Friday, U.S. Central Command said four Islamic State tanks were destroyed in Syria's Deir el-Zour province. The Syrian Observatory said oil facilities were the apparent target of overnight strikes in Deir el-Zour and a command center was also hit.

In northern Syria, video posted to social media appeared to show Kurdish fighters launching attacks on Islamic State targets near Kobani.

In Iraq, seven strikes targeted armored vehicles, including three Humvees and a mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle, U.S. military officials said. Several other vehicles and outposts were hit in strikes near Kirkuk, west of Baghdad, and near al-Qaim.

US Trainers in Saudi Arabia

U.S. teams tasked with training select Syrian rebel groups were beginning to arrive in Saudi Arabia in place to start their work. The teams are part of U.S. efforts to train elements of the Syrian opposition to fight Islamic State militants.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Friday opposition fighters were being vetted by U.S. military, diplomatic, and intelligence experts to determine who will be trained, but the rebel groups will choose their own leadership.

More than 200 airstrikes have been conducted in Iraq this week and 43 in Syria, Hagel said.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the military campaign is an Iraq-first strategy, but not an Iraq-only strategy. He said that any ground troops he might recommend be used in Iraq in the future would be international, and comprised of Iraqis, Kurds and Syrian opposition forces.

Russia Again Condemns Strikes

At the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday, Russia — Syrian President Assad's lone ally among major powers — voiced new criticism of the U.S. military initiatives.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in a thinly veiled reference to coalition airstrikes on Syrian soil, accused Washington of resorting to "military interference" to defend its interests. Moscow has repeatedly argued that the West should cooperate with the Syrian president in battling the extremists. On Friday, Lavrov called airstrikes in Syria a violation of international law because the US-led coalition has not received permission from Damascus.

The coalition should seek Syrian cooperation not only for legal reasons but to ensure "the efficiency of the effort," Lavrov said.

Lavrov's statements have been the strongest criticism yet at the U.N. General Assembly, where most speakers have spoken out against the Islamic State.

Jordanian King Abdullah on Saturday the threat of Islamic State militants demands a "coalition of the determined" to combat and defeat them with "consistency and resolve."

United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Abdullah Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan told the U.N. General Assembly Saturday that Islamic State threats are expanding beyond the Middle East. Speaking through an interpreter, he said "the current collective action against the threat of ISIS and other terrorist groups reflects the international community's common conviction of the necessity to confront this imminent danger.

"Civilized communities have no other option but to succeed completely in this test and eliminate this threat," said Al-Nahyan, who then called for increased support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's more moderate opponents.

On Friday, U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice met at the White house with a delegation from the Syrian Opposition Coalition, including that group's president, Hadi al-Bahra. They discussed ways the United States can support the moderate opposition to counter Islamic State and strengthen the prospects for a political transition in Syria.

The Islamic State militants, comprising local and foreign fighters and espousing a severe form of Islam, swept through large parts of Iraq in June, defeating U.S.-trained-and-armed Iraqi forces, seizing large amounts of their weapons. It already controlled large amounts of territory in Syria, where it is fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.

The campaign has brought Washington back to the battlefield of Iraq that it left in 2011 and into Syria for the first time after avoiding involvement in a war that began the same year.

VOA State Department correspondent Scott Stearns contributed reporting from the United Nations. Some information for this report comes from AP, AFP and Reuters.

http://www.voanews.com/content/us-conti ... 64315.html

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BBC News Middle East

Islamic State crisis: Coalition bombs Syria refineries

US-led coalition aircraft have targeted four makeshift oil refineries under Islamic State (IS) control in Syria, as well as a command centre.

Early indications were that the attacks by US, Saudi and UAE planes were successful, US Central Command said.

Explosions at a refinery at Tel Abyad, near the Turkish border, lit up the night sky, an eyewitness watching from across the frontier said.

Meanwhile further fighting was reported in the besieged border town of Kobane.

A resident in the town, which has been under attack from Islamic State for more than a week, told the BBC that five shells had fallen there and two over the border in Turkey.

There was no repetition on Sunday of coalition air strikes on IS positions in the area, where Syrian Kurd fighters have been holding out against the militants.

The IS advance in the area sent about 140,000 civilians fleeing towards Turkey.



An initial wave of coalition air attacks on Thursday, the third day of the air campaign against IS in Syria, targeted 12 refineries.

According to the Pentagon, small-scale mobile refineries used by IS in Syria generate up to $2m (£1.2m) per day in revenue for the militants.

The US-led coalition of about 40 countries, including Arab states, has vowed to destroy IS, which controls large parts of north-eastern Syria and northern Iraq.

The group's brutal tactics, including mass killings, beheadings and abductions of members of religious and ethnic minorities, triggered the international intervention.

Al-Nusra Front, a fellow Islamist militant group in Syria, has denounced the air strikes as "a war against Islam" and called on jihadists around the world to target Western and Arab countries involved.
Night strikes

"Although we continue to assess the outcome of these attacks, initial indications are that they were successful," US Central Command said after Sunday's strikes.



Blasts at the Tel Abyad refinery around 02:30 local time (23:30 GMT Saturday) sent flames soaring 60m (200ft) into the sky, Turkish businessman Mehmet Ozer, who lives in the nearby Turkish town of Akcakale, told AP news agency.

They continued for two hours, rocking the building from which he was watching, Mr Ozer said.

Both the refinery and the local IS headquarters were bombed, Turkey's Dogan news agency said.

Article and Video:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-29401848

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The Guardian

Top Republican calls for US ground war amid fresh strikes on Isis
By Ed Pilkington

New US-led wave of bombing raids target Islamic State oil supplies as John Boehner ramps up military rhetoric

The Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, on Sunday ramped up the political rhetoric over Syria and Iraq by saying American forces will need to be put on the ground in the battle against the Islamic State (Isis).

Boehner’s comment that at some point “boots have to be on the ground” marks a significant inflation in the terms of the debate over how to deal with Isis. President Barack Obama has repeatedly said US ground forces will not be used in the conflict, which on Sunday saw US-led strikes in Syria and the first British strikes in Iraq, though the Pentagon has ordered the dispatch of 1,600 US troops to Iraq for what it insists will be training and other support functions.

Speaking to ABC News, Boehner criticised Obama’s plan to degrade and ultimately destroy Isis. “If the goal is to destroy Isil as the president says it is,” he said, “I don’t believe the strategy he outlines will accomplish it. At the end of the day I think it’s going to take more than airstrikes to drive them out – at some point somebody’s boots have to be on the ground, that’s the point.”

Asked whether such boots would need to be American ones if other countries failed to step up to the challenge, the top Republican in the House replied: “We have no choice. They intend to kill us. These are barbarians, if we don’t destroy them first we are going to pay the price.”

While Boehner introduced the idea of a ground war against Isis, the Obama administration continued to stress that it had no intention of being sucked back into an Iraqi war involving forces on the ground. Tony Blinken, the deputy national security adviser in the White House, told Fox News Sunday the air campaign in Syria and Iraq was totally different to the prolonged wars of the past decade.

“We are not sending hundreds of thousands of troops back to Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere else,” he said. “We are not going to be spending trillions of American dollars. What we are doing is supporting local forces with some of our unique assets – air power, training and equipment, intelligence. They will be doing the fighting on the ground.”

Blinken said the administration was determined not to fall into what he called an “al-Qaida trap” that involved sending hundreds of thousands of US troops back to Iraq. “That’s exactly what they want us to do – to bog us down,” he said.

The debate in Washington over the roll of ground forces came as the US-led coalition continued to pound Isis positions in Syria and Iraq from the air.

US-led forces attacked new targets in eastern Syria and along the Syrian border with Turkey, in an attempt to disrupt Islamic State (Isis) oil supplies and halt the militants’ relentless advance through Kurdish villages. In Iraq, British jets carried out bombing missions for the first time.

Monitoring groups reported that a fresh wave of strikes had been launched on Saturday and into Sunday morning in the eastern province of Raqqa and in the Kobani region along the Turkish border. The bombing raids were led by the US, but the Pentagon stressed the involvement of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

The Obama administration is keen to portray the assault on Isis as being carried out by a broad coalition that includes Arab states, rather than as a replay of unilateral US intervention in the Middle East.

The Kobani strikes were the first in an area that has seen Isis advance through Syrian Kurdish villages, forcing an exodus across the border into Turkey of at least 150,000 people. Kurdish leaders in both Syria and Iraq have pleaded with the US-led coalition for more than a week to do something to impede the militants’ advance through a rural area with a population of about 400,000.

The air assault was relatively modest, destroying a building and two armoured vehicles, according to US central command. Ojlan Esso, spokesman for the Syrian Kurds in Kobani, said 35 Isis fighters were killed in the strikes.

The arrival of the fighter jets was welcomed by Syrian Kurdish leaders, who had been expressing growing anger at the failure of the US to act while one village after another fell to the militants. The Kurds, armed only with light weapons, have been overwhelmed by much more heavily armed Isis fighters.

The strikes on Raqqa focused on a main stronghold of Isis forces as well as makeshift oil refineries that are used by the militant group to secure petrol supplies.

The US has been pounding Isis from the air in Iraq from 8 August and inside Syria for six days.

On Sunday, it was reported that a Twitter account run by an al-Qaida member said Muhsin al-Fadhli, the leader of the al-Qaida linked Khorasan group, was killed in a US air strike in Syria this week. On Wednesday, the Pentagon said it was still investigating whether Fadhli had been killed in the Tuesday strike, as had initially been claimed.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/s ... ian-border

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The Guardian

Isis reconciles with al-Qaida group Jabhat al-Nusra as Syria air strikes continue

Air strikes continued to target Islamic State (Isis) positions near the Kurdish town of Kobani and hubs across north-east Syria on Sunday, as the terror group moved towards a new alliance with Syria’s largest al-Qaida group that could help offset the threat from the air.

Jabhat al-Nusra, which has been at odds with Isis for much of the past year, vowed retaliation for the US-led strikes, the first wave of which a week ago killed scores of its members. Many al-Nusra units in northern Syria appeared to have reconciled with the group, with which it had fought bitterly early this year.

A senior source confirmed that al-Nusra and Isis leaders were now holding war planning meetings. While no deal has yet been formalised, the addition of at least some al-Nusra numbers to Isis would strengthen the group’s ranks and extend its reach at a time when air strikes are crippling its funding sources and slowing its advances in both Syria and Iraq.

Al-Nusra, which has direct ties to al-Qaida’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, called the attacks a “war on Islam” in an audio statement posted over the weekend. A senior al-Nusra figure told the Guardian that 73 members had defected to Isis last Friday alone and that scores more were planning to do so in coming days.

“We are in a long war,” al-Nusra’s spokesman, Abu Firas al-Suri, said on social media platforms. “This war will not end in months nor years, this war could last for decades.”

In the rebel-held north there is a growing resentment among Islamist units of the Syrian opposition that the strikes have done nothing to weaken the Syrian regime. “We have been calling for these sorts of attacks for three years and when they finally come they don’t help us,” said a leader from the Qatari-backed Islamic Front, which groups together Islamic brigades. “People have lost faith. And they’re angry.”British jets flew sorties over Isis positions in Iraq after being ordered into action against the group following a parliamentary vote on Friday.

David Cameron has suggested he might review his decision to confine Britain’s involvement to Iraq alone, but for now the strikes in support of Kurdish civilians and militants in Kobani were being carried out by Arab air forces from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE and Bahrain.

The US was reported to have carried out at least six strikes in support of Kurdish civilians near the centre of Kobani, where the YPG, the Kurdish militia, is fighting a dogged rearguard campaign against Isis, which is mostly holding its ground despite the aerial attacks.

Kobani is the third-largest Kurdish enclave in Syria, and victory for Isis there is essential to its plans to oust the Kurds from lands where they have lived for several thousand years. Control of the area would give the group a strategic foothold in north-east Syria, which would give it easy access to north-west Iraq.

US-led forces are also believed to have carried out air strikes on three makeshift oil refineries under Isis’s control.

Isis continued to make forays along the western edge of Baghdad, where its members have been active for nine months. The Iraqi capital is being heavily defended by Shia militias, who in many cases have primacy over the Iraqi army, which surrendered the north of the country.

That rout – one of the most spectacular anywhere in modern military history – gave Isis a surge of momentum and it has since seized the border with Syria, menaced Irbil, ousted minorities from the Nineveh plains and threatened the Iraqi government’s hold on the country.

Barack Obama said the intelligence community had not appreciated the scale of the threat or comprehended the weakness of the Iraqi army. In an interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes, he said: “Over the past couple of years, during the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you have huge swaths of the country that are completely ungoverned, they were able to reconstitute themselves. And so this became ground zero for jihadists around the world.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/s ... ikes-syria

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Sky News

Obama Admits US 'Underestimated' IS Threat

US intelligence agencies underestimated the threat posed by the Islamic State extremist group, Barack Obama has said.

The President also said that, conversely, the US overestimated the ability of the Iraqi army to fight the militants.

Speaking on a 60 Minutes interview on CBS, he said that militants took advantage of the "chaos of the Syrian civil war".

"And so this became ground zero for jihadists around the world."

Asked if the rapid rise of the group came as a surprise, Mr Obama responded: "I think, our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria."

The President last week expanded US-led airstrikes, which began in Iraq in August, to Syria and he has been seeking to build a wider coalition effort to weaken IS.

The group has killed thousands and beheaded at least two US journalists and a Briton while seizing parts of Syria and northwestern Iraq.

Mr Obama outlined the military goal against IS, which is also known as ISIL or ISIS.

"We just have to push them back, and shrink their space, and go after their command and control, and their capacity, and their weapons, and their fuelling, and cut off their financing, and work to eliminate the flow of foreign fighters."

Mr Obama said the chances of success are greater in Iraq than they are in Syria.

"I think that right now, we've got a campaign plan that has a strong chance for success in Iraq. I think Syria is a more challenging situation," he said.

In Syria, the US also faces the risk of inadvertently helping Bashar al Assad as it battles IS.

"I recognise the contradiction in a contradictory land and a contradictory circumstance," Mr Obama said.

"We are not going to stabilise Syria under the rule of Assad," whose government has committed "terrible atrocities", he said.

http://news.sky.com/story/1344007/obama ... -is-threat

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New York Times

Refugees Flood Turkish Border as Islamic State Steps Up Attacks on Syrian Kurds

MURSITPINAR, Turkey — Shelling intensified Sunday on Kobani, the Syrian town at the center of a region of Kurdish farming villages that has been under a weeklong assault by Islamic State militants, setting fire to buildings and driving a stream of new refugees toward the fence here at the border with Turkey.

The extremist Sunni militants have been closing in on the town from the east and west after moving into villages with tanks and artillery, outgunning Kurdish fighters struggling to defend the area. The Kurds fear a massacre, especially after recent Islamic State attacks on Kurdish civilians in Iraq. More than 150,000 people have fled into Turkey over the past week.

There were no sounds of jets overhead to indicate to the Kurds that help was coming from the American-led coalition, whose stated mission is to degrade and destroy the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Two airstrikes on the eastern front hit Islamic State armored vehicles on Saturday, but did not appear to halt the advance.

“Where’s Obama?” one Turkish Kurd demanded, watching in anguish near the border fence as the headlights of cars could be seen streaming out of Kobani toward the border, although there was no way to cross it. “Does he care about the Kurds?”

The leader of the Nusra Front, a group linked to Al Qaeda, vowed Sunday to retaliate against the United States for its airstrikes in Syria. It was a shift for a group that had kept its focus on ousting Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, and fighting his ally Hezbollah.

“People of America, Muslims will not stand watching their children bombed and killed and you staying safe in your homes,” the leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, said in a videotaped speech.

In Kobani, also called Ayn al-Arab, at least eight projectiles, possibly artillery shells, struck during the afternoon and evening, appearing to have come from the east. One hit the main mosque, whose minaret can be seen just across the border from Turkey. As twilight fell, a shell streaked red through the sky and landed in the town.

Dozens of cars were parked near the fence, as they have been over the past week as people have gathered against the chain-link border barrier, trying to get as close to safety as possible. The main border crossing appeared to be closed, and workers were constructing an earthen berm around it.

Even as it has accepted tens of thousands of refugees, Turkey has closed seven of nine crossing points in the area. Several times, the authorities have used tear gas to disperse crowds trying to cross, while also preventing Turkish and Syrian Kurds from crossing the border to fight the Islamic State. Kurds accuse Turkey, which has remained vague on how it will assist the American-led coalition, of tacitly supporting the Islamic State to weaken Kurdish efforts to gain more autonomy in northern Syria.

At least two people have been killed and 16 wounded while crossing minefields along the border to escape the fighting, including five who lost limbs, according to Syrian Arab Red Crescent relief workers.

Karam Shoumali reported from Mursitpinar, and Anne Barnard from Gaziantep, Turkey. Bryan Denton contributed reporting from Mursitpinar.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/29/world ... .html?_r=0

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“People of America, Muslims will not stand watching their children bombed and killed and you staying safe in your homes,” the leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, said in a videotaped speech.

Bombing women and children is wrong no matter who their fathers and husbands are

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Mail Online

U.S. airstrikes on ISIS 'killed Syrian civilians after mistaking grain silo for jihadist base'
By Jack Crone and Lucy Crossley for MailOnline and Associated Press

British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, gather information from sources in Syria
They say missile set grain silo ablaze in ISIS town of Manbij, northern Syria
Claim two civilians killed including 'workers who provide food for people'
IS fighters 'also died in a strike on a building on the town's outskirts'
US says there is 'no evidence' any civilians were killed in the strike
Group count at least 19 civilians killed so far in coalition airstrikes
US-led coalition has been targeting ISIS-controlled towns in Syria since last week

At least two civilian workers were killed after missiles launched in a US airstrike targeting an ISIS-controlled region in Syria struck grain silos, according to a human rights group.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights believes aircraft may have mistaken the mills and grain storage areas in the northern Syrian town of Manbij for an Islamic State base.

The US-led coalition has been targeting towns and villages in northern and eastern Syria controlled by the Islamic State group since last week.

The campaign expands upon US airstrikes against militants in Iraq since early August.

The Observatory, which gathers information from sources in Syria, says a grain silo was set ablaze by a missile from one of the most recent airstrikes - killing at least two civilians.

Strikes on a building on a road leading out of the town also killed a number of Islamic State fighters, said Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Observatory which gathers information from sources in Syria.

Mr Abdulrahman, said today: 'These were the workers at the silos. They provide food for the people.' The airstrikes 'destroyed the food that was stored there'.

The group says at least 19 civilians have been killed so far in coalition airstrikes.

The US military said tonight that an American air strike overnight had targeted Islamic State vehicles in a staging area adjacent to a grain storage facility near Manbij, and added it had no evidence so far of civilian casualties.

'We are aware of media reports alleging civilian casualties, but have no evidence to corroborate these claims,' said Colonel Patrick Ryder, a spokesman at the US military's Central Command. He promised that the military would look into the report further, saying it took such matters seriously.

The United States has been bombing Islamic State and other groups in Syria for a week with the help of Arab allies, and hitting targets in neighbouring Iraq since last month. European countries have joined the campaign in Iraq but not in Syria.

The US said the facility targeted was used by the Islamic State as a logistics hub and vehicle staging area.

Manbij sits between Aleppo city in the west and the town of Kobani on the northern border with Turkey, which Islamic State has been trying to capture from Kurdish forces, forcing tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds to flee over the frontier.

On Sunday, Human Rights Watch said that it had confirmed the deaths of at least seven civilians - two women and five children - from apparent U.S. missile strikes on September 23 in the village of Kafr Derian in Idlib province.

The New York-based group said two men were also killed in the strikes, but that they may have been militants, basing its conclusions on conversations with three local residents.

'The US and its allies in Syria should be taking all feasible precautions to avoid harming civilians,' said Nadim Houry, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

'The U.S. government should investigate possible unlawful strikes that killed civilians, publicly report on them, and commit to appropriate redress measures in case of wrongdoing.'

Syria's army also carried out air raids in Aleppo province overnight, targeting areas east of Aleppo city with barrel bombs and other projectiles, the Observatory said.

The army also carried out air strikes in Hama in western Syria.

Nadim Houry from Human Rights Watch said the US and its allies in Syria should be 'taking all feasible precautions to avoid harming civilians'

Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have been battling Islamist fighters around Aleppo, which is held by a number of groups in Syria's war.

In eastern Syria, US-led forces bombed a gas plant controlled by the Islamic State outside Deir al-Zor city, wounding several of the militant group's fighters, the Observatory said.

The US has said it wants strikes to target oil facilities held by Islamic State to try to stem a source of revenues for the group.

The raid hit Kuniko gas plant, which feeds a power station in Homs that provides several provinces with electricity and powers oil field generators, the Observatory said.

Link to Pics and Videos:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... group.html

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The bombing in Al-Muhandisin

was only 3 miles from the Al Razi Hospital

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BBC Middle East

Syria crisis: Turkey stops Kurds from entering Syria to fight IS

The refugee crisis from Kobane in Syria has revived tensions between the Turkish government and Turkish Kurds.

The Turkish government is preventing Turkish Kurds from leaving the country to fight against Islamic State in Syria.

The BBC's Mark Lowen sent this report from Mursitpinar on the Turkish-Syria border across from Kobane.

Link to Video:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-29415142

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The Guardian

Schoolgirl jihadis: the female Islamists leaving home to join Isis fighters
Harriet Sherwood, Sandra Laville, Kim Willsher in Paris, Ben Knight in Berlin, Maddy French in Vienna and Lauren Gambino in New York

Hundreds of girls and women are going missing in the west, reappearing in Iraq and Syria to bear children for the caliphate

Hundreds of young women and girls are leaving their homes in western countries to join Islamic fighters in the Middle East, causing increasing concern among counter-terrorism investigators.

Girls as young as 14 or 15 are travelling mainly to Syria to marry jihadis, bear their children and join communities of fighters, with a small number taking up arms. Many are recruited via social media.

Women and girls appear to make up about 10% of those leaving Europe, North America and Australia to link up with jihadi groups, including Islamic State (Isis). France has the highest number of female jihadi recruits, with 63 in the region – about 25% of the total – and at least another 60 believed to be considering the move.

In most cases, women and girls appear to have left home to marry jihadis, drawn to the idea of supporting their “brother fighters” and having “jihadist children to continue the spread of Islam”, said Louis Caprioli, former head of the French security agency Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire. “If their husband dies, they will be given adulation as the wife of a martyr.”

Five people, including a sister and brother, were arrested in France earlier this month suspected of belonging to a ring in central France that specialised in recruiting young French women, according to Bernard Cazeneuve, the interior minister.

Counter-terrorism experts in the UK believe about 50 British girls and women have joined Isis, about a tenth of those known to have travelled to Syria to fight. Many are believed to be based in Raqqa, the eastern Syrian city that has become an Isis stronghold.

Those identified by researchers at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at Kings College London are mainly aged between 16 and 24. Many are university graduates, and have left behind caring families in their home countries. At least 40 women have left Germany to join Isis in Syria and Iraq in what appears to be a growing trend of teenagers becoming radicalised and travelling to the Middle East without their parents’ permission.

“The youngest was 13-years-old,” Hans-Georg Maassen, president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, told the Rheinische Post. “Four underage women left with a romantic idea of jihad marriage and married young male fighters who they had got to know via the internet.”

In Austria, the case of two teenage friends, Samra Kesinovic, 16, and Sabina Selimovic, 15, who ran away from their homes in Vienna to join jihadis in Syria, may be “only the tip of the iceberg”, said Heinz Gärtner, director of the Austrian Institute for International Politics. An estimated 14 women and girls are known to have left Austria to fight in the Middle East, according to the interior ministry.

The US does not have available data on women and girls joining Isis fighters in Syria, a senior intelligence official said in an emailed statement. “We do not have numbers to share on the number of women linked to [Isis] or fighting for them,” the official said.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a counter-terrorism expert at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, downplayed the issue in the US, saying the number of women and girls joining Isis was of concern, but not an epidemic. “It’s a threat, but it’s [one] among many potential threats coming out of Syria,” he said.

Karim Pakzad, of the French Institute of International and Strategic Relations, said some young women had “an almost romantic idea of war and warriors.

“There’s a certain fascination even with the head and throat-cutting. It’s an adventure.” Some may feel more respected and important than in their home countries, he added.


Samra Kesinovic, 16. as she was

Her school said she had been speaking out for ‘holy war’, writing ‘I love al-Qaida’ around the building. Photograph: Interpol


Samra Kesinovic as she is now

But Shaista Gohir, of the UK Muslim Women’s Network, said little was known about the young women’s motivation or what happened to them after leaving home. “Some of these girls are very young and naive, they don’t understand the conflict or their faith, and they are easily manipulated. Some of them are taking young children with them; some may believe they are taking part in a humanitarian mission,” she said.

Social media plays a crucial role in recruiting young women to join Isis in the Middle East, according to many experts.

Some British women and girls have posted pictures of themselves carrying AK-47s, grenades and in one case a severed head, as they pledge allegiance to Isis. But they are also tweeting pictures of food, restaurants and sunsets to present a positive picture of the life awaiting young women in an attempt to lure more from the UK.

Mia Bloom, a security studies professor at Massachusetts University and author of Bombshell: Women and Terrorism, said the recruitment campaign painted a “Disney-like” picture of life in the caliphate. Some young women were offered financial incentives, such as travel expenses or compensation for bearing children.

Women already living amid Isis fighters used social media adeptly to portray Syria as a utopia and to attract foreign women to join their “sisterhood in the caliphate”, she said. “The idea of living in the caliphate is a very positive and powerful one that these women hold dear to their heart.”

But the reality was very different, she said. Both Bloom and Rolf Tophoven, director of Germany’s Institute for Terrorism Research and Security Policy, said reports indicated that women had been raped, abused, sold into slavery or forced to marry. “[Isis] is a strictly Islamist, brutal movement ... the power, the leadership structure, are clearly a male domain,” said Tophoven.


Zahra Halane, 16, who made her way to Syria with her twin sister shortly after sitting her GCSEs. Tweets about her new husband throwing her kitten out betray her age.

Messages between a British Isis fighter in Syria and his common-law wife, read in a UK court last month, revealed that many fighters are taking several wives.

In an article in Foreign Policy focusing on Isis’s attitudes to women, former CIA analysts Aki Peritz and Tara Maller said fighters were “committing horrific sexual violence on a seemingly industrial scale.

“For example, the United Nations last month estimated that [Isis] has forced some 1,500 women, teenage girls and boys into sexual slavery. Amnesty International released a blistering document noting that [Isis] abducts whole families in northern Iraq for sexual assault and worse.

“Even in the first few days following the fall of Mosul in June, women’s rights activists reported multiple incidents of [Isis] fighters going door to door, kidnapping and raping Mosul’s women.”

FRANCE

• Nora el-Bathy was an ordinary French schoolgirl who wanted to be a doctor. She was 15 but looked young for her age: a slight, smiling youngster in jeans and trainers posing for a photograph under the Eiffel Tower.

When Nora left her family home in the southern French city of Avignon one morning last January, with her school bag, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. But, when her classes ended that day, Nora did not return home. Instead, she took a train to Paris, withdrew €550 (£430) from her savings account and changed her mobile phone to cover her tracks. She boarded a flight for flew to Istanbul, and from there took an second internal flight to the Syrian border.

Back in Avignon, her parents – practising but not strict Muslims – reported Nora missing to the police.

Her eldest brother, Fouad, trawled local hospitals convinced she had been in an accident, searched his sister’s bedroom, and examined her Facebook account for clues. There were none, except her hijab, which she had started wearing a few months before, in the wardrobe.

It was only when Fouad quizzed her closest school friends that the reason for Nora’s disappearance emerged.

The el-Bathy family discovered that found she had opened a second Facebook account where she was in contact with “jihad recruiters” in the Paris region and had posted videos of women appealing for recruits to go to Syria. In one picture, a completely veiled woman, brandishing a Kalashnikov, appeared with the caption: “Yes, kill! In the name of Allah,” in French.

Fouad, a former French soldier, was devastated. “She had a second Facebook account on which she spoke of making hijra [going to live in an Islamic country], and a second mobile phone to call the ‘sisters’,” Fouad told his local paper.

Nora had begun talking of wearing the full veil and of helping the wounded in Syria, particularly children; and shortly before she disappeared, she asked her parents if she could have her passport, claiming she had lost her identity card.

But nobody in the el-Bathy family imagined she was planning to run away to war. “We absolutely didn’t see what was coming,” Fouad said.

Three days after her disappearance, Nora telephoned her family. Police traced the calls to the Turkish-Syrian border. She told them she was fine, eating well, happy and that she did not want to return to France.

She also sent Fouad a text message to say she had arrived in Aleppo, Syria, and that she “preferred being there”. The family received two further phone calls: one from a man speaking Arabic and a second from a man speaking French. The caller asked them to give their permission for Nora to marry. Her parents refused.

Fouad decided to go to Syria to rescue his sister, but was turned back at the Turkish border. While there, he received a call from Nora. In the brief conversation, she described how she had learned to shoot, but promised she would not be fighting.

Another man who claimed to be in charge of the French fighters in Syria called Fouad to say: “Your sister is safe and she is here by choice. She’s not being kept here against her will by force. If she says she wants to go, she can go, but she wants to stay,” the man said.

Fouad later succeeded in getting to Syria and seeing Nora. Afterwards, he said she had told him: “‘I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life.’

“She was thin and sick. She never sees any light. With other women she has to look after young children, orphans, but she lives surrounded by armed men.”

The el-Bathy family is now taking legal action for their daughter’s kidnap, believing that while Nora went to Syria of her own free will, she had been brainwashed by extremists.

Their lawyer, Guy Guénoun, told journalists that her recruitment and disappearance appeared to have been well planned. “It’s obvious she’s been taken in hand by a very intelligent and structured network,” he said.

UK

• Twin sisters Zahra and Salma Halane, 16, left their home in Chorlton, Manchester, in July without their parents’ knowledge to follow their brother to Syria.


The brainbox twins, who have 28 GCSEs between them, did a midnight flit from their home three weeks ago.

The girls – whose parents came to the UK as refugees from Somalia – passed their GCSEs last summer after attending Whalley Range high school for girls in Manchester and went on to study at Connell sixth-form college.

They left home in the middle of the night and were reported missing by their parents. Now both are reportedly married to Isis fighters.

A social-media account believed to belong to Zahra shows her in a full veil posing with an AK-47 and kneeling in front of the Isis flag. Recent postings describe how she had lost her kitten, after her husband threw it outside.

• Aqsa Mahmood – also known as Umm Layth – left Glasgow for Syria last November and has married an Isis fighter. She is a prolific social-media user and writes a blog in which she advises other young women about the best way to travel to Syria and marry a fighter.

Mahmood, 20, has described the difficulty of telephoning her parents from the Turkish border to tell them she wanted to become a martyr and would see them again on judgment day.

In her blog she wrote: “The first phone call you make once you cross the borders is one of the most difficult things you will ever have to do. Your parents are already worried enough over where you are, wether [sic] you are okay and what’s happened.

“How does a parent who has little Islamic knowledge and understanding comprehend why their son or daughter has left their well-off life, education and a bright future behind to go live in a war-torn country.”

In a post earlier this month she described the type of young women who, like her, had joined Isis from all over the world.

“Most sisters I have come across have been in university studying courses with many promising paths, with big, happy families and friends, and everything in the Dunyah [material world] to persuade one to stay behind and enjoy the luxury. If we had stayed behind, we could have been blessed with it all from a relaxing and comfortable life and lots of money. Wallahi [I swear] that’s not what we want.”

She made a direct appeal on 11 September this year for others to join her. “To those who are able and can still make your way, hasten hasten to our lands ... This is a war against Islam and it is known that either ‘you’re with them or with us’. So pick a side.”

Full Article see young girls from other countries:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/s ... iraq-syria

[Anthea]

Al-Monitor

Syrians on both sides oppose US strikes

The US-led coalition has finally begun its military campaign against the Islamic State (IS) and other extremist groups inside Syria, plunging this war-torn nation into yet more uncertainty and turmoil. There is widespread rejection of the coalition strikes across the dividing lines inside Syria. Contrary to their political leaders’ stances, Syrians from both camps are against foreign military action, but for entirely different reasons. Aside from the immediate humanitarian worry about potential civilian casualties and the fear that it may prove counterproductive and lead to increased radicalization, each side has its own unique concerns.

Ammar is a longtime Baath Party member and a die-hard regime loyalist. While he did not directly lay the blame for the situation on the regime, he did at least hold it partly responsible. Flustered with indignation, he said, “We were once a powerful nation and a big player in the region. Look at us now — even tiny Bahrain is bombing us. We’ve become a laughingstock.”

This consternation is quite palpable among regime supporters, who feel a mixture of frustration and humiliation at what has become of their country’s sovereignty, although no one blames the regime directly, alluding instead to plots and conspiracies by traitors, Arab nations and Turkey. The fact that the Syrian regime was informed beforehand of the impending strikes came as little consolation.

For its part, the regime seems to be quietly happy about the strikes, in stark contrast to its main backers, Iran and Hezbollah. To the regime’s thinking, it has successfully achieved one of its main objectives: turning the conflict in Syria from a mass uprising into a civil war, and finally to a war against terror. Furthermore, no longer is anyone talking about regime change, which seems to be completely off the table, at least in the short to medium term. Finally, destroying the powerful and capable jihadist groups on the ground will enable the regime’s forces and their allies to regain the upper hand on the battlefield, possibly winning a decisive military victory that ends the conflict. Those groups have proven to be the fiercest and most effective forces fighting the regime, causing it to lose considerable territory and men. Removing them will be to the regime’s advantage, or so it thinks.

Ironically, this is also part of the reason the main opposition group in exile, the Syrian National Coalition, is in favor of military action in Syria. It also reasons that destroying the jihadists will tip the balance of power on the ground to its advantage. The main hurdle to properly arming secular rebel groups was always the West's fear that weapons might fall into the hands of radicals. With that sticking point gone, a powerful rebel army can be trained and equipped, or so the group hopes. Furthermore, the opposition envisions that at some point in the future, the US-led coalition will finally turn its guns on the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, which would almost certainly hand opposition forces their victory on a plate.

However, none of the main “moderate” rebel factions on the ground or their support bases feel the same way. In fact, they have been quite outspoken in their hostility toward the coalition’s strikes in Syria. Even groups that had previously received advanced US weaponry, such as Harakat Hazm, have come out against it, fearing a backlash should they been seen as US stooges. The rebels’ blanket rejection of coalition military action, while being an embarrassment to the United States and other backers of the Syrian opposition, stems from two major points.

First, the targeting of the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, which is popular both within rebel ranks and among local populations as an effective anti-regime force that, unlike IS, has yet to enforce its hard-line ideology through violence. The second issue is the failure of the coalition to target Assad’s forces or their allied militias. The Syrian rebels have a real fear that given their current state, they will not be able to take advantage of the vacuum created by the absence of the jihadists. That void, they feel, will be filled by the better equipped and more powerful regime forces, who will ultimately become the sole beneficiaries of the foreign military action. Any plans to equip or train a rebel army may come too little, too late.

These sentiments were echoed by Abu Hammoud, a Liwa al-Tawhid commander now in Turkey. He told Al-Monitor, “[The coalition forces'] military action in Syria is unbalanced. They are not striking the root cause of extremism, which is the regime that allowed [IS] to exist. If they remove [IS] but leave the regime, another will come along; it will never end.” There is no love lost between Abu Hammoud and IS, which Liwa al-Tawhid has been battling for almost a year, but his lack of support for military action ultimately aimed at destroying the terrorist group speaks volumes about the intricacies of the Syrian conflict.

There is a minority, bipartisan voice in Syria that is supportive of the coalition strikes against IS and other jihadist groups. These groups are seen as regular spoilers of any efforts to negotiate a political settlement, even scuttling localized cease-fires that are vital in building mutual confidence and trust. Getting rid of jihadists will remove a major obstacle to any eventual peaceful resolution, the stated goal of the United States as well as many major players on both sides. It remains to be seen, however, if this is anything more than wishful thinking, as the cynicism and self-interest of those very players has let down the Syrian people in the past.

The machine of war grinds on in Syria and drags its hapless people into yet another violent and turbulent phase. Far from any respite, there is no light at the end of the tunnel; all we see now is more gloom and uncertainty. Helpless passengers on a horrific ride, we wait to see what the latest bloody escalation will bring as we learn to live with yet another form of death from the sky.

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/origina ... um=twitter

[Anthea]

Al Jazeera

'We will fight Daesh'
Kiran Nazish

Earlier on Monday, activists told Al Jazeera that ISIL fighters were within five kilometres of Ain al-Arab (Kobani). Intensified shelling in and around Ain al-Arab has angered Kurds on the Turkish side of the border, who said the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was not doing enough to stop the assault. Turkish tanks have been sent to hills overlooking Ain al-Arab, while a US-led coalition intensified its bombing of ISIL in northern and eastern Syria. At least 15 tanks were positioned, some with their guns pointing towards Syrian territory.

Meanwhile, thousands of Syrian refugees have been allowed to enter Turkey, with the UN refugee agency suggesting it is possible the entire town of Ain al-Arab, population 400,000, could flee to Turkey.

"This is an existential battle for both Syrian and Turkish Kurds, who have in the past fought many battles for Kurdistan," Ismat Sheikh Hassan, defence chief of Ain al-Arab, told Al Jazeera. "ISIL is a new but harsher enemy in their fight, and like in most occasions, we are fighting alone."

On Saturday, US-led air strikes also hit ISIL targets in Ain al-Arab. Ashraf Ali, a YPG fighter who crossed the border to Suruc after getting injured in a fight in Ain al-Arab on Friday, noted: "There is not a single help by the US or any other external party. The air strikes are in the area where Daesh is headquartered and no one is fighting them. Who will help us in this fight?"

US Central Command said an ISIL building and two "armed vehicles" were destroyed at the Ain al-Arab border crossing, while other strikes were also carried out in other parts of Syria and northern Iraq, hitting ISIL targets.

While many Syrians have fled Ain al-Arab to escape ISIL, Turkish Kurds are also crossing the border to Syria to join the YPG fighters.

Last week, Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), called for a mass conscription against ISIL. "I call on all Kurdish people to start an all-out resistance against this high-intensity war," he said from prison on September 22, via his lawyer.

Within days, more than 200 Kurdish youth from Turkey and Syria in Mursitpinar had sworn allegiance to Ocalan, who has led many fights against Turkey for an independent Kurdistan.

"We want freedom for the Kurds," hundreds of youth chanted after pledging their allegiance. "We will fight the Daesh."

Later on Friday, fences lining the border of Turkey and Syria in Ain al-Arab were taken down by vigorous youth, and about 1,500 Kurdish men, women and children crossed into Ain al-Arab. They were received by YPG fighters. Some told Al Jazeera they had come to Turkey as refugees, but had now decided to return and join the fight against ISIL.

A Kurdish commander who fought ISIL when it approached Ain al-Arab last week, was helping to facilitate the flow of Syrians back into their hometown. "The Daesh had progressed within 15km of our city, and then we fought hard and sent them back. I will go again to fight," he said on condition of anonymity.

Ali Cubuci, a 29-year-old Turkish Kurd who helped break the fences, added: "It's better to die fighting ISIL to protect our land, than to die in a country that has never recognised us."

Those re-entering Ain al-Arab to fight ISIL include women, elderly men and untrained fighters. "I will help in the logistics, whatever I can do to aid the fighters to protect us from Daesh," Burhan Abdullah, a 34-year-old schoolteacher who has never picked up a gun, told Al Jazeera.

More than a dozen Kurdish parliamentarians also arrived at the Ain al-Arab border crossing to show support. "Most of these fighters are not trained, but the fighters in Ain al-Arab will train whomever they deem fit," said BDP member Mehmet Emin Aman. "We are here to support them."

http://m.aljazeera.com/story/2014928101835679118

[Anthea]

RT

Syria to UN: We stand with anti-ISIS global effort, but what about our sovereignty?

Syria took the stand at the UN on Monday announcing its support for the global struggle against Islamic State (IS) militants and warning of the severe danger the jihadists pose. However Syria has warned that strikes could violate its sovereignty.

“ISIS and Nusra [front] and the rest of the Al-Qaeda affiliates will not be limited within the borders of Syria and Iraq but will spread to every spot that it can reach, starting with Europe and America,” Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said at the United Nations General Assembly on Monday.

While he steered clear of outright condemning the US airstrikes within Syria’s borders, he did offer a warning that any military action while support for militants continued could lead to the development of a situation in which “international community will not exit in decades”.

“The Syrian Arab Republic reiterates that it stands with any international effort aimed at fighting and combating terrorism, and stresses that this must be done in full respect of the lives of innocent civilians and within the frame of full respect of national sovereignty, and in conformity with international conventions,” Moualem said.

President Barack Obama authorized US air strikes against Islamic State targets in Syria earlier this month. Shortly afterwards, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the US Central Command plans to take “targeted actions against ISIS safe havens in Syria,” including striking infrastructure. The US has said that it would arm the moderate opposition, prompting fears that the sovereignty of Syria’s government could be threatened.

The Syrian FM pointed out that Damascus has been warning of threats for three and a half years, adding that they have been warning, and reiterating the warning.

He said that a lesson needs to be learned from previous years and an international effort devised to stop terrorist groups “in the same way that those organizations have rallied themselves from all corners of the earth and brought them to one spot to train and arm and re-disseminate their ideology and terrorism through those extremists.”

On September 21, Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, told his US counterpart John Kerry, that Washington must respect Syria’s sovereignty while dealing with the IS.

Lavrov stressed “the importance of coordinated action... by the international community aimed at countering the threat” coming from IS.

However, he warned against “double standards” and “distortion of facts” during the battle against the terrorist group, which has declared a caliphate in the occupied territories of Syria and Iraq.

Moualem on his behalf implied a degree of support for the international effort in suppressing ISIS militants, but with respect for “national sovereignty”.

“It is high time that we gather all our efforts,” he said. “ISIS …let us exert pressure on the countries that joined the coalition led by the US to stop their support of the armed terrorist groups.”

Several rounds of sanctions have been imposed on Syria by the US and EU, with embargoes and travel bans being in place against certain officials.

The Syrian FM pointed that sanctions can be counterproductive.

“The inhuman sanctions imposed by the EU and US aggravated the living conditions of Syrian civilians. At the same time, in collaborating with the UN, my government…is willing to meet the basic needs…of the citizens, especially those forced by terrorist attacks to flee,” he said.

http://rt.com/news/191604-syria-isis-un-terrorism/

[Anthea]

Reuters

U.S.-led air strikes pose problem for Assad's moderate foes

U.S.-led air strikes against al Qaeda-inspired militants in Syria pose a problem for moderate rebel opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The Western-backed rebels say they face a backlash from Syrians angered by the offensive, even though they have been kept in the dark about the air strikes against their enemies in Islamic State.

This could complicate Washington's plan to turn disparate rebel groups into a ground force to combat the militants.

The rebels say civilian casualties from the week-old air campaign and suspicion of U.S. motives are endangering the public support they have gained during their fight with Assad.

"There is popular anger towards us," said rebel commander Ahmed al-Seoud, who defected from the Syrian army in 2012 and leads a rebel group known as the 13th Division.

His group defines itself as part of the "Free Syrian Army" - loosely affiliated non-Islamist factions, some of which are backed by donors including the United States and Gulf Arab countries that have supported the uprising against Assad.

The 13th Division boasts 1,700 fighters and is in need of everything from boots to arms even though it has been a recipient of foreign aid. Its position as Western-backed means people see it as supporting the air strikes, said Seoud.

"We support air strikes, but air strikes against Islamic State and the regime," he said in an interview in the Turkish town of Reyhanli near the Syrian border.

DAMASCUS HEARTENED

The United States says it is investigating allegations of civilian deaths from the air strikes and takes great care to try to avoid them. Still, Syrians protested against the air strikes in several rebel-held parts of the country on Friday, footage posted on Youtube showed.

While Washington has said it will not cooperate with Assad, who it says has lost legitimacy as leader of Syria, its air strikes have steered well clear of any government targets.

That has further heartened Damascus, a year after the United States shied away from launching military action against Assad. In the week since they were launched, his forces have pressed their attacks on the array of groups ranged against them in three and a half years of civil war.

Syria's non-Islamist rebels are as keen as anyone to see the end of Islamic State, which has seized a third of the country, mostly by taking territory won from the government by other factions.

But they are also in a fight for survival against the Syrian army and its allies, including the Lebanese group Hezbollah.

Battling both Assad and Islamic State, poorly armed rebels have no interest in escalating their fight with the militants at this point unless they can be sure the Syrian air force will not attack them in whatever territory they capture.

Thus far, there has been no sign of coordination with the U.S.-led coalition that could provide such air cover, according to members of rebel groups that have been fighting both Assad and Islamic State in northern Syria.

"It is not to our advantage to fight (IS) at this time just because some Tomahawks are falling on them ... without knowing that the regime has completely lost air supremacy over us," said Abu Abdo Salabman from the political office of the Mujahideen Army, an FSA-affiliated group he said has 7,000 personnel.

"They will bomb us out and take any advances we have made," he said in an interview in the Turkish city of Gaziantep. "It will be like we’re cooking the meal for the regime to eat in the end."

NO SIGN OF MORE WEAPONS

The Mujahideen Army, formed at the start of the year from eight smaller rebel factions, is being vetted as a possible recipient of aid from donors including the US, Salabman said.

But he added that Washington "won't be able to mobilize friends on the ground without coming up with a complete plan for (Islamic State) and the regime".

A handful of FSA factions have received military training in an ostensibly covert training program run by the CIA.

But Western states have been hesitant to provide significant military aid, fearing it could end up in the hands of extremists.

The United States is planning to train thousands of moderate rebels as part of its strategy to fight Islamic State. But the program could take several years.

Rebels fighting in northern Syria say there has been no sign of an accelerated dispersal of weapons, though some said they were hopeful they would receive more soon.

The first night of air strikes included an attack on al Qaeda fighters affiliated with the Nusra Front in an area where FSA-affiliated groups also operate.

Some of the Western-backed rebels have condemned the air campaign as unwanted foreign intervention.

For some rebels, the approach taken by the United States has raised questions about its agenda: Washington informed Damascus ahead of the strikes, but not them, they say.

A U.S. defense official told Reuters there was not enough of a mature organization within the moderate Syrian opposition at this point to be talking about coordinating strikes with it.

ALEPPO

As Islamic State positions are bombed further east, there has been no movement in a key front line near Aleppo, where FSA-affiliated groups including the Mujahideen Army are fighting to stop Islamic State advancing.

The same groups are also battling simultaneously on other fronts to stop government forces from encircling Aleppo.

Were the U.S.-led coalition to coordinate military action against Islamic State with rebels in Aleppo province, that would mark a big shift towards engaging them directly in the battle. But it has yet to happen, the rebels say.

"The contacts are still very weak, with respect to the air strikes. There was absolutely no coordination," said Hussam Almarie, a spokesman with FSA-affiliated groups in northern Syria. "They have promised us they will open the lines of coordination more."

The air strikes are part of what Obama has described as a strategy to degrade and destroy Islamic State, which has seized large areas of territory in both Syria and Iraq in a bid to reshape the Middle East.

The U.S. strategy includes training 5,000 Syrian rebels in the first year of a program that Saudi Arabia has offered to host and could go on for several years.

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Friday a Western-backed opposition force of around 12,000 to 15,000 would be needed to retake areas of Syria controlled by Islamic State.

A limited amount of financial and military aid has been funneled to moderate rebel groups in Syria via a body grouping states that have backed the uprising against Assad. The body, set up this year, marks a bid to better control the flow of aid.

One recipient is the Hazzm movement, which was formed at the start of the year from FSA factions. It has been supplied with American-made anti-tank missiles not previously seen in the war.

But it still suffers from a lack of weaponry that means it can only deploy a fraction of the 5,000 fighters to whom it pays a salary of $100 a month, said Abu Abdullah, a Hazzm commander.

"Hazzm is today seen viewed as backed by the USA, but the support it gets does not reflect this," he said.

The U.S. defense official said it was too early to be talking about broadly equipping new forces, since the U.S. program in Saudi Arabia is only now starting to get underway.

Support has turned into a double-edged sword as Hazzm tries to build support among Syrians in the areas where it is operating. Both the Mujahideen Army and Hazzm have issued statements condemning the U.S.-led coalition's air strikes.

"People say the coalition is with Bashar. This puts us - the moderate groups - in a difficult position vis a vis the Syrian people. They say: 'Your friends, the people who are supposed to be friends of Syria, didn't find a solution or even put in place a strategy to eliminate the regime of Bashar al-Assad’."

Abdullah said he did not blame the United States for not bombing Assad's forces, noting Russia would have vetoed any attempt to get legal backing for intervention in the United Nations Security Council.

"But you can’t explain this to a child whose father has been killed," he said. "Or a woman who was raped in jail and has a child from an unknown father, or a mother who lost four or five children."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/ ... BE20140930