SDF militia makes gains in Taqba city

(Zaman Al Wasl)- US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces pressed new advances aginst Islamic State inside Tabqa city; taking blocks in the western neighborhoods, local activist said Friday.

Muhan Nasser told Zaman al-Wasl the Kurdish-led forces made gains in Wadi Mahouk and al-Qariya districts in the city.

The multi-phased campaign against ISIS was launched in November but has slowed in recent weeks.

Pushing down from the north, the SDF is trying to take the Islamic State-held Tabqa area and its adjacent Euphrates dam, the largest in Syria, some 40 km (25 miles) upstream of Raqqa.

SDF forces surround Tabqa town, having cut it off in late March from a swathe of Islamic State territory which runs across Syria into Iraq.

On Friday the SDF said it had pushed up into the town and taken the southern neighborhoods of Nababila and Zahra, having taken Wahab neighborhood to their south on Thursday.

In recent weeks the SDF has also squeezed Islamic State's pocket of territory around Raqqa, which the jihadist group has used as a base to plot attacks and manage much of its self-declared caliphate since seizing the city in 2014.

The Kurdish YPG militia is the strongest unit of the SDF and is taking part in the assault on Tabqa and Raqqa, but it is seen by Turkey as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a three-decade insurgency against Ankara.

The SDF condemned Turkish strikes on the Kurdish People's Protection Units militia, calling for a no-fly zone to be established.

The Syrian Democratic Forces [SDF] said on Tuesday that the Turkish strikes which targeted YPG were an attempt to halt its advance on the ISIS de facto capital of Raqqa, according to al-Araby al-Jadeed.

The toll in Tuesday's Turkish air raids on Kurdish positions in northeastern Syria rose to 28 killed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Wednesday.

President Tayyip Erdogan said Friday Turkey's southern border region with Syria had come under serious mortar fire over the last two days and Turkish forces were retaliating as necessary.

Erdogan also told a conference in Istanbul that United States support for Kurdish militia fighters inside Syria was damaging solidarity between Washington and Ankara, but that relations could turn a page under President Donald Trump.

"We will continue to take any measures as long as the threats persist... We will not allow efforts to form a terror corridor at our southern border," Erdogan said.