The Syrian Observatory For Human Rights

Kurdish Fighters Battling for Control of Syria Dam

U.S.-backed Kurdish militias and their allies battled Sunday to consolidate their hold over a strategic dam in northern Syria, which they seized from the extremist group Islamic State.

A fighter from the Democratic Forces of Syria looks down on the Tishrin dam. Photo: rodi said/Reuters

U.S.-backed Kurdish militias and their allies battled Sunday to consolidate their hold over a strategic dam in northern Syria, which they seized from the extremist group Islamic State.

The Kurdish militia known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, along with allied local Arab fighters in what’s called The Democratic Forces of Syria said they captured the Tishrin Dam on the Euphrates river, located about 60 miles east of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, over the weekend.

Video footage released by the YPG on Sunday showed Kurdish fighters on the hills overlooking the dam.

Local opposition activists and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based monitoring group, said Kurdish fighters have crossed over to the west bank of the Euphrates, severing a crucial Islamic State supply line connecting the town of Manbej in Aleppo Province and the city of Raqqa. Both places are under the extremist group’s control, with the latter being the capital of its self-proclaimed caliphate. Clashes were ongoing Sunday.

Neighboring Turkey, which considers the YPG a terrorist organization and an offshoot of Kurdish separatists it has been battling for decades in Turkey, had previously warned it would retaliate against any crossing of the Euphrates by the Syrian Kurds, who already control most of Syria’s northern border with Turkey.

The Turks have been under tremendous pressure from Washington and its European allies to do more to fight Islamic State. Turkish officials on Sunday said they were “closely monitoring developments on the ground” in northern Syria, suggesting possible prior coordination with the U.S.

The U.S. military said on Sunday it conducted several airstrikes against Islamic State targets near Manbej and Raqqa, where the Kurds and their allies have been pressing ahead with their latest offensive against Islamic State.

Facing setbacks across the region, the group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi mocked the U.S. and its allies in a purported audio statement released Saturday for relying on what he described as local proxies like the Kurds, saying this was because they did not dare send their own troops to fight his group.

Elsewhere in Syria rebel groups supported by Turkey and its regional Arab allies Qatar and Saudi Arabia came under increased pressure from regime forces backed by Iran and Russia.

Russian warplanes pounded rebel positions on Sunday around the capital Damascus and in the southern province of Daraa, according to opposition activists and Syrian state media.

In Douma, the main city in the rebel-held eastern suburbs of Damascus, residents said warplanes dropped leaflets telling civilians to leave and warned fighters that they were going to be killed if they did not surrender.

“Cooperate with the Syrian Army and leave the area of military operations to save your life,” read one leaflet.

Another was in the form of a $100 bill showing a portrait of Mr. Baghdadi on one side and a dead rebel fighter on the other with the caption: “this is the end of dirty money.”

Islamic State has no presence in Douma or the eastern suburbs but the Syrian regime and Russia consider the area’s largest rebel group, The Army of Islam, a terrorist organization. The group’s leader Zahran Alloush was killed along with several of his associates on Friday in what was believed to be a Russian airstrike.

Mr. Alloush’s newly appointed successor appealed to Sunni-led states like Saudi Arabia and Turkey that have been supporting his group and others in Syria to not cave in to what he called a new aggression by the enemy.

“You have the responsibility to double your efforts to expose the criminals and those who support them and safeguard the rights of an ummah [nation] which all forces of evil have conspired against,” said the new leader Essam Buwaidani in a video message released by the group Saturday.

The killing of Mr. Alloush and the stepped up Russian-backed regime offensive against rebels could derail U.N.-mediated peace talks between the regime and opposition that were scheduled to begin in late January, some members of the Syrian opposition say.

Source: Kurdish Fighters Battling for Control of Syria Dam – WSJ