ISTANBUL — With Islamic State militants pressing a new military offensive north of Aleppo, moderate rebels pleaded Monday for U.S. intervention to preserve rebel supply routes and prevent Syria’s biggest city from falling to the extremists.
Islamic State fighters were reported just 6 miles from the Bab al Salameh border crossing across from Kilis, Turkey, a major portal for rebel weapons, civilian food and other supplies.
Capturing the crossing point would cut off rebel forces in Aleppo, and rebels voiced fear that the Syrian government might abandon its positions in the city, allowing Islamic State forces to move in without resistance.
Meanwhile, rebel forces rushed to the area from Aleppo and Idlib province to counter the Islamic State advance. One group, Sukour al Jabal, which receives aid from the U.S.-backed Military Operations Center, reported destroying two Islamic State tanks and two large cannons using U.S.-supplied TOW anti-tank missiles.
The Islamic State offensive began Friday. Fresh from its conquest of Ramadi, the biggest city in Anbar province in Iraq, and the capture of Palmyra, a city in eastern Syria that has some of the greatest Roman ruins in the Middle East, Islamic State attacked rebels at three locations along a 30-mile front and captured three villages.
The next day, the Syrian government unleashed barrel bombs that opposition reports claimed killed upward of 100 civilians in Aleppo and al Bab, a city controlled by Islamic State.
A spokesman for the al Shamiah front, the umbrella group for rebels in the area, said the Syrian air attack ended up helping Islamic State advance, with government aircraft attacking the towns of Maria and Soran just as Islamic State did the same.
Islamic State fighters were backed by Grad missiles and heavy artillery, and used tanks in the initial attack, according to the spokesman, who spoke on the condition that he be identified by his nom de guerre, Abu Muhammad, and was interviewed in Aleppo via Skype. Islamic State later deployed two explosives-laden armored vehicles as suicide bombs in Soran, he said. Those bombs wounded 30 rebels and forced the rebels to withdraw to al Kafra, a village about a mile away.
Simultaneously, Islamic State fighters attacked farther south, taking the village of al Hisya and part of Umm al Quraa. A third attack captured the village of Tel Ashaer, Abu Muhammad said.
The spokesman criticized the U.S.-led coalition for not bombing Islamic State convoys as they moved into position from Raqqa, Islamic State’s capital, and al Bab.
“There were convoys of 15 to 20 vehicles each,” he said. “Only two coalition raids in the past three days would have been enough to stop the attack.”
A similar complaint was lodged by Salim Idriss, a rebel commander who once was the United States’ designated leader of rebel forces in Syria. At a news conference in Istanbul, he said the international coalition repeatedly had allowed Islamic State convoys to pass unhindered, most recently on Sunday, when he said a 60-vehicle convoy moved from Raqqa to Aleppo unmolested.
In Washington, Army Col. Steven Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said the U.S. military was aware that Islamic State convoys move around Syria, but he defended the lack of airstrikes, saying the U.S. priority “remains Iraq, where we have a willing partner on the ground.”
While the United States has used a clandestine CIA program to arm some rebels in Syria, it generally has not embraced most of the country’s armed opposition, much of which U.S. officials have accused of having ties to al-Qaida or other Islamist forces.
“One of the things we’re doing (in Syria) is training the moderate opposition so that we can have a viable ground partner in Syria that will help us beat back ISIS,” Warren said, using an acronym for Islamic State.
