Islamic State advances in Aleppo as Syria, France extend offensive to retake territory

The Islamic State militia advanced in Aleppo, taking several villages and towns from rebel groups in the north of the Syrian province, a monitoring group said on Friday.
The advances by the extremist militia come, despite continued airstrikes against the group by US-led coalition forces, ongoing for over a year.
Russia too says it is attacking Islamic State positions, though Moscow appears to be primarily focused on aiding its ally President Bashar al-Assad in his fight against rebels and securing the western coastal area where it has a naval base.
Rami Abdel Rahman, Head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the latest push by the extremist militia is “one of the biggest advances the Islamic State has scored in months.”
He said there were more airstrikes in the areas where it was on the move.
Several major Syrian rebel forces in Aleppo, including hardline Islamic militias, are fighting both al-Assad and the Islamic State group.
The rebels rely on holding key routes in northern Aleppo so that they have access to Turkey from where they can be resupplied.
The Islamic State has lost much of its central and eastern border area with Turkey over the past year, largely in heavy fights with Kurdish forces who are backed by the US-led coalition.
However, it continues to move westward towards Aleppo, where rebel forces hold parts of the divided city, with al-Assad controlling the other neighbourhoods and outlying villages.
Turkey, a key backer of forces opposing al-Assad, has been concerned that Islamic State could take the main border crossing area in Aleppo province.
The rebels have managed to take the north-western Idlib province from al-Assad’s forces, but are now facing Russian airstrikes in the area.
Meanwhile, Syrian troops and allied militia backed by a fresh wave of Russian air strikes and cruise missiles fired from warships, attacked rebel forces and hope to recapture a major territory in the west of the country.
The assault focused on western areas where rebel advances earlier this year had threatened the coastal region vital to President Bashar al-Assad’s support base.
The Russian Defence Ministry said it fired missiles from ships in the Caspian Sea for a second day and had hit weapons factories, arms dumps, command centres and training camps.
Meanwhile, U.S. officials said they believed four Russian cruise missiles bound for Syria had crashed en route in Iran, however, Russia’s Defence Ministry insisted the missiles had reached their targets in Syria.
Since Russia began air strikes last week, it has described all its targets as belonging to the Islamic State group, although most have been in areas controlled by other rebel movements where Islamic State has little or no presence.
On Thursday, Moscow said its air force hit 27 Islamic State targets in the provinces of Homs, Hama and Raqqa, while Kirby said Secretary of State John Kerry had expressed his concern to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov by telephone that most of the targets hit so far were not related to Islamic State.
The U.S. has been leading a separate air campaign against Islamic State targets for a year, and the arrival of Russian war planes last week means the Cold War superpower foes are now flying combat missions in the same air space for the first time since World War Two.
Washington and its allies who want Assad to leave power have accused Moscow of using a campaign against Islamic State as a pretext to target Assad’s other enemies, many of which receive help from countries that oppose him.
But Russia, allied to Damascus since the Cold War, says Assad’s government should be part of an international campaign against extremists.
Also, French Defence Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, on Friday, said that his country had launched a new air strike overnight in Syria against an Islamic State training camp.
“France hit Daesh of Islamic State in Syria last night in Raqqa and the targets were met ,it is not the first time, nor will it be the last time as other strikes will follow,” Le Drian told newsmen
It would be recalled that France launched its first air strike in Syria on September 27, destroying an Islamic State training camp near Deir al-Zor in the east of the country, saying at the time it was acting in “self defence”.
Defending the action, Le Drian said that the Islamic State was France’s “main enemy” and that Russian air strikes were mostly hitting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s opponents in Syria and not Islamic State targets.
He reiterated that Assad, whom he said had killed 250,000 of his own people, could not be part of a political solution in Syria.
France, which has provided weapons and logistical support to rebels linked to the Free Syrian Army in the past, has repeatedly said Assad would have to go before government troops and rebels could together defeat Islamic State.