REYHANLI, Turkey — The Syrian opposition, already divided deeply over a shakeup of its top military staff, formally has split with one of its most important political components, the Syrian National Council, adding to a growing leadership crisis in the group that has been the Obama administration’s primary Syrian ally.
The breakdown among the so-called moderate opposition comes as the Syrian government presses an aggressive bombing campaign over rebel-held areas of Aleppo and an al-Qaida-inspired group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, continues to challenge other rebels for primacy in northern Syria.
On Thursday, suspected ISIS members detonated a suicide bomb at a tent camp at the Bab al-Salama border crossing with Turkey, killing 24 people, according to Turkish news reports. The car bombing came just days after ISIS captured a village less than a mile from the crossing and fired rockets near the camp. Reuters quoted the camp administrator as blaming Thursday’s attack on ISIS.
Turkey closed the crossing, except for the transport of the wounded to Turkish hospitals, effectively sealing the border for shipments of food and other supplies for the enormous number of homeless Syrians, as well as weapons and supplies for rebel forces. Turkey closed the even bigger crossing at Reyhanli last weekend after Islamist fighters mounted an operation to remove armed groups there who had been seizing aid from convoys entering Syria.
