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Syrian rebels from an Islamist alliance formed last month have occupied bases and warehouses belonging to a Western-backed rebel group on the Turkish border, rebels and activists said on Saturday.
Fighters from the Islamic Front, a union of six major rebel groups, took control of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) bases at the Bab al-Hawa crossing on the northwestern border with Turkey late on Friday night, the opposition sources said.
Militants stormed the Defense Ministry in the heart of Yemen’s capital Thursday, killing 52 people, including at least seven foreigners, in a suicide car bombing and assault by gunmen. The brazen attack claimed by al-Qaida’s local branch in Yemen follows a rise in U.S. drone strikes in this key American ally in the Middle East.
The two-stage operation came as the defense minister was in Washington for talks. The U.S. military increased its regional alert status after the attack and is ‘‘fully prepared to support our Yemeni partners,’’ a senior U.S. defense official said.
Fighting between Shi’ite Houthi rebels and Sunni Salafis in northern Yemen has killed more than 120 and a government official in charge of enforcing a ceasefire accused the Houthis of breaking the truce, a newspaper said on Sunday.
The latest round of fighting between the Houthis and Salafis has added to the challenges facing US allied Yemen, already grappling with a southern separatist movement and an insurgency by Islamist militants linked to al-Qaeda.
Rebels pressed an offensive east of Damascus and in southeastern Aleppo, in an escalation that in the past three days has killed scores of fighters on both sides, a monitoring group said on yesterday.
Rebels in Eastern Ghouta east of Damascus are trying to break the army siege on opposition areas there, taking over several small villages and checkpoints, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
A string of government air strikes on rebel-held areas in northern Syria on Saturday killed at least 44 people, activists said, as al-Qaida-linked rebels captured one of the country’s oil fields in the east.
Rami Abdurrahman, the director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the attack on the rebel-held town of al-Bab near the northern city of Aleppo is the deadliest of the three raids. He said that strike killed 22.