Turkish-backed rebels clashed with Syrian Kurdish forces in a northwestern Syrian village on Monday in escalating violence between the two sides, like reported by ekurd.net.

The clashes took place around the village of Ain Daqna and the nearby Menagh Air Base north of Aleppo, while Turkish forces stepped up shelling positions in other areas, Reuters reported citing officials and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Tensions have mounted between Turkish and Syrian Kurdish forces since early this month after Turkish forces, along with their opposition allies in Syria, attacked Kurds in the Afrin district, one of the Kurdish Cantons in Syrian Kurdistan. The Kurds retaliated with artillery fire.

Hawar News Agency also reported the Kurdish forces responded to attacks from the Turkish-backed rebels.

“There are big clashes happening on the Ain Daqna axis, between us and the Turks and their mercenaries,” Rojhat Roj, a spokesman for the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) said.

A member of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Mostafa Bali, said some Turkish-backed rebels had been killed and captured.

Both the YPG and the SDF are backed by the United States in the fight against Islamic State (IS) militants in Raqqa, while Turkey sees the YPG as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), considered a terrorist organization by Ankara.

The YPG is leading the U.S.-backed campaign against IS militants to liberate the militants-held stronghold of Raqqa, some 200 kilometers to the east of Aleppo where tensions between the Turkish army and the YPG have been increased in recent weeks.

Clashes between the two U.S. allies, the YPG and Turkey, have caused tension between Ankara and Washington. Turkey has criticized the U.S. decision to arm the YPG for the IS fight in Syria.

U.S regards the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD and its powerful military wing YPG, which is part of Kurd-Arab SDF alliance, as key ally against Islamic State and the most effective fighting force against IS in Syria and has provided them with arms, air support as well as the military advisers.

The YPG, which has 60,000 fighters, has seized swathes of Syria from IS.

The Kurdish-led SDF announced on Sunday they have achieved a significant advance against the Islamic State (IS) in Raqqa after securing a Yarmouk neighborhood in the southwest from the militant group.

Hunkered down in sniper positions on the top floor of an abandoned building in the Syrian city of Raqqa, two Americans and a British volunteer face off Islamic State snipers on the other side of the front line. The trio, including two who were battle-hardened by experience in the French Foreign Legion and the war in Iraq, have made the war against IS in Syria their own.

They are among several U.S. and British volunteers in the decisive battle against the Islamic State group for Raqqa, the city in northeastern Syria that the militants declared the capital of their self-proclaimed caliphate in parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq.

The men joined U.S.-allied Syrian militias for different reasons – some motivated by testimonies of survivors of the unimaginable brutality that IS flaunted in areas under its control.

Others joined what they see as a noble quest for justice and a final battle with the “heart of darkness,” in a belief that violence can only be met with violence.

Taylor Hudson, a 33-year old from Pasadena, compares the fight for Raqqa to the 1945 Battle of Berlin in World War II that was critical to ending the rule of Adolf Hitler.

“This is the Berlin of our times,” said Hudson, who doubles as a platoon medic and a sniper in the battle against the militants. For him, IS extremists “represent everything that is wrong with humanity.”

Syria’s war, now in its seventh year, has attracted foreign fighters to all sides of the complicated conflict.

Islamic extremists from Europe, Asia and North Africa have boosted the ranks of the Islamic State group, as well as rival radical al-Qaida-linked groups. Shiite Iranian and Lebanese militias have sided with the Syrian government, deepening the sectarian nature of the conflict that has killed over 400,000 people and displaced over 11 million, half of Syria’s pre-war population.

On the anti-IS side – though far less in numbers than the thousands of foreigners who swelled the IS ranks – most Western foreign volunteers have been drawn to the U.S.-allied Kurdish militia known as The People’s Protection Units, or by their Kurdish initials as the YPG. The U.S. military has developed a close relationship with the YPG and its extension, the Syrian Democratic Forces, in the war against IS.

Some Western volunteers have died in battle – earlier in July the YPG announced that 28-year-old Robert Grodt, of Santa Cruz, California, and 29-year-old Nicholas Alan Warden, of Buffalo, died in the battle for Raqqa.

Since launching the push on Raqqa on June 6, the U.S.-backed forces have conquered a third of the city.

Hudson, who has been fighting in Syria for the past 13 months, said he was moved to tears by stories in the media of Iraqi Yazidi women who were enslaved by IS militants and looked for a way to help. A pharmacy student who learned combat medicine in the field, he said he had treated some 600 wounded ahead of the march onto Raqqa.

The presence of Western anti-IS volunteers in Syria has created something of a conundrum for their governments, which have often questioned them on terrorism charges.

“I am not a terrorist,” said Macer Gifford, a 30-year former City broker in London, who came to Syria three years ago to volunteer first with the Kurdish militia. Now he is fighting with an Assyrian militia, also part of the U.S-backed forces battling IS militants.

“I am here defending the people of Syria against terrorists,” he added.

Gifford has been questioned by both his British government and by the U.S government. At home, he has written and lectured about the complex situation in Syria, offering a first-hand experience of IS’ evolving tactics.

He believes the militants can only be defeated by sheer force.

“The Islamic State (group) is actually an exceptional opponent,” Gifford said. “We can’t negotiate them away, we can’t wish them away. The only way we can defeat them is with force of arms.”

For Kevin Howard, a 28-year old former U.S. military contractor from California who fought in Iraq in 2006, the war against the Islamic State group is more personal.

A skilled sniper who prides himself in having killed 12 IS militants so far, Howard said he is doing it for the victims of the Bataclan theatre in France, where the sister of one of his best friends survived. The Nov. 13, 2015 attacks claimed by IS killed 130 people at Paris cafes, the national stadium and the Bataclan, where 90 died.

“This is a continuation of that fight, I think if you leave something unfinished, it will remain unfinished for a lifetime,” he said, showing off his 1972 sniper rifle.

On his forehead and neck, he has tattooed the “Rien N’emp

At least 15 Yemeni rebels and eight soldiers were killed Monday as government forces attacked insurgent positions in two areas in the south-west of the country, military officials said according to newindianexpress.com.

Loyalists attacked Shiite Huthi rebels and their allies, renegade troops loyal to ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, at Heess, on the road linking the city of Taez with Hodeida port, on the Red Sea coast, officials said.

The attack aimed to block the road leading to the rebel-held port, the officials said.

The second attack targeted rebels in Al-Hameli area, north of the port of Mokha, which was recaptured by government forces in February as part of a major ongoing offensive to drive rebels from the lengthy Red Sea coastline.

Several soldiers were wounded in the clashes, officials said.

Warplanes from the Saudi-led Arab coalition backed government forces in the attacks, officials said.

The coalition mounted a military operation against the rebels in March 2015 as insurgents closed in on President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi in his southern refuge in Aden forcing him to flee to Riyadh.

Government forces have since recaptured five southern provinces, including the city of Aden, which has become a temporary base for Hadi’s internationally recognised government.

The World Health Organization estimates that more than 8,000 people have been killed in Yemen’s conflict, most of them civilians, since March 2015.

The country has also been hit by a deadly cholera outbreak and is on the edge of famine.

Weeks after reports about his death, mystery still surrounds the fate of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi especially after the terrorist organization lost its stronghold in Iraq, Mosul.

A Kurdish official revealed that Baghdadi is indeed alive and still leading ISIS from inside Syria, adding that the organization is trying to take its leader into one of three countries in the region.

Spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in Nineveh, Gayath al-Sourji revealed to Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper that based on their resources, since ISIS took over Mosul and Anbar Baghdadi had been injured and treated twice. He added that currently, Baghdadi is inside Syria in the areas under ISIS control.

Sourji confirmed that Baghdadi is not in Raqqah but rather other areas because he doesn’t want to be uncovered by coalition air force circulating above the area.

He reiterated that the news about his death are not true and were only reported for diversion.

Since losing its control over Mosul, the city where Baghdadi announced the khalifa, the terrorist organization is planning for a new battle which will include its militants that escaped the cities after the liberation. Those militants became sleeper cells which Iraqi security sources admit being the hardest challenge to overcome and a hurdle to stability.

According to Sourji, ISIS will try to activate its sleeper cells in and outside Mosul especially after it lost all hope in being able to control large areas of the country. He also pointed out that rather than direct engagement the organization will most likely resort to guerrilla war such as attacks, assassinations, and targeting security forces as well as civilians.

Prior to the initiation of liberation operations of Mosul, a number of ISIS militants ranged between 10 and 12 thousand, according to Sourji.

He added that half of those escaped to Tal Afar and al-Hawijah while the others fled to Syria, and part hid among civilians. Only about 4000-5000 militants fought in Mosul.

Sourji warned against the threat ISIS militants posed on the Iraqi security.

Displaced citizens arriving at the camps on Mosul outskirts reported that the organization had divided its militants into three groups.

Citizen from Mosul who identified himself as Abu Ahmad told Asharq al-Awsat that prior to the liberation operation of Mosul, ISIS assigned a part of its militants for combat, some were instructed to hide among civilians while others were transferred outside of Iraq.

Abu Ahmad pointed out that civilians know the ISIS militants hiding among them but are too scared to report them to the security forces.

More than 25,000 Daesh fighters were killed during the battle to regain control of Mosul, Iraqi Lieutenant General Abdul Ameer Yarallah said, like reported by middleeastmonitor.com.

The head of the military campaign to restore the governorate of Nineveh said:

The forces involved in the liberation of the city have killed more than 25,000 terrorists from Daesh, including more than 450 suicide bombers, in nine months.

“Iraqi forces destroyed 1,247 car bombs, shot down 130 Daesh aircrafts, and more than 1,500 different militants’ vehicles.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi declared victory in Mosul on 9 July bringing an end to jihadist rule in the city.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) continued their military operations against Islamic State’s (ISIS) extremists in the city of Raqqa, the de facto capital of the radical group in Syria, like reported by aranews.net.

The US-backed SDF troops targeted a main ISIS-held weapons storage centre in the Old City of Raqqa.

“Our forces shelled the key building with heavy artillery, destroying at least six ISIS armoured vehicles, several machine guns and a large deal of ammunition,” a SDF spokesman told ARA News on Sunday.

The official added that the operation was meant to undermine ISIS weapons arsenal by destroying the main storage centre in Raqqa.

“The attack also caused the death of more than 35 ISIS terrorists,” the spokesman said.

In the meantime, clashes continued on Monday between the SDF troops and ISIS militants in some seven neighbourhoods of Raqqa city, including al-Dariya, al-Barid, Hisham bin Abdulmalik, al-Malab, and the Old City.

This comes after the SDF launched a major operation to liberate the city of Raqqa from ISIS radicals.

Raqqa has been known as a de facto capital for the ISIS self-proclaimed Caliphate since the summer of 2014.

On June 6, the Syrian Democratic Forces announced the official start of the battle for Raqqa city.

On Friday, July 14, Army General Joseph Votel, commander of the U.S. Central Command, said that the battle for Raqqa will take months.

“A large city, an indigenous force, a well-prepared enemy. We would expect they [ISIS] are going to fight harder, and more aggressively than they are and a large part of that is going to be exploited again. So I think it is going to be a challenging fight and it will take months,” he stated.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) to boost the ballistic missile program of the country, reports said according to ibtimes.com.

After a meeting with the commanders of IRGC which had launched missiles against ISIS target in Syria in June, Khamenei tweeted the importance of the missile program.

On June 18, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps fired six missiles into eastern Syria, targeting ISIS strongholds in retaliation for the terrorist group storming the parliament and the mausoleum of Imam Khomeini on June 7, killing 18 people and injuring at least 56.

The Iranian retaliatory strike left dozens of terrorists killed and injured.

While media reports citing Israeli sources said the missiles failed in their objective and fell short of their target, Marc Martinez, a senior analyst at The Delma Institute in Abu Dhabi, writing for the National said, “the attack was a sobering moment for the region, as it suggested the accuracy of Iran’s ballistic missiles have been underestimated.”

“More significantly, it offers Iranian scientists a way to test and further improve the country’s ballistic missiles,” Martinez wrote.

To bring about this improvement, the Iranian parliament is considering a proposal to spend nearly $550 million to bolster security and expand the country’s missile program, the Voice of America reported.

“As such, approximately 300 million dollars have been allocated to promote Iran’s missile program,” said Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, Algemeiner reported.

The bill would raise the IRGC budget to $8 billion, in addition to an already approved five-year development plan that requires the government to earmark at least 5 percent of the national budget to defense, particularly for the development of the multidimensional missile program, the VOA reported.

Babak Taghvaee, a Malta-based Iran military expert, said the additional fund for missile development “would probably be spent on the domestically produced Ya-Ali cruise missile, which was long awaited for financial sources,” according to the Voice of America.

“The money would be insufficient to push Iranian missile capability close to that of Chinese or Russian weapons, but it would help the Iranians enhance their progress in terms of making missiles more accurate,” Taghvaee further said.

While the July 2015 nuclear deal didn’t impose many restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missiles programme, a non-binding U.N. resolution called on them not to create such weapons.

Iran’s increasing missile activity has rankled the U.S. and Israel, who have sought to curb it. On 15 June, the U.S. Senate voted nearly unanimously for a legislation that would impose new sanctions on Iran over its ballistic missile activity, and urged the United Nations to closely monitor Iran’s missile buildup. However, the U.N. on June 29 said Tehran was in compliance with its obligations under the international nuclear deal.

This was disputed by the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.

However, Boroujerdi said Iran’s missile program does not run contrary to the U.N. Security Council’s resolution which endorsed the nuclear deal between Iran and great powers, Tehran Times reported. “We will continue supporting the missile program firmly,” he told ISNA in an interview published on Tuesday.

The head of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia said on Wednesday that Turkish military deployments near Kurdish-held areas of northwestern Syria amounted to a “declaration of war” which could trigger clashes within days, like reported by komnews.org.

Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus retorted that his country was not declaring war but that its forces would respond to any hostile move by the YPG, which he described as a small-scale army formed by the United States.

The mounting tensions between two U.S. allies in northwestern Syria risk opening yet another front in the multi-sided conflict, in which outside powers are playing ever greater roles.

They could also distract the YPG from the U.S.-backed campaign it is spearheading to capture Islamic State’s stronghold of Raqqa, some 200 km (125 miles) away.

Asked by Reuters whether he expected a conflict with Turkey in northern Syria, where the two sides have exchanged artillery fire in recent days, YPG Commander Sipan Hemo accused Turkey of preparing for a major military campaign in the Aleppo and Afrin area.

“These (Turkish) preparations have reached level of a declaration of war and could lead to the outbreak of actual clashes in the coming days,” he said in emailed comments. “We will not stand idly by against this potential aggression.”

Turkey’s policy in northern Syria has been focussed on containing the growing sway of Kurdish groups that have established autonomous regions since Syria’s war began in 2011.

Ankara says the YPG represents a security threat, seeing it as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been fighting an insurgency against the Turkish state for decades.

“This is not a declaration of war. We are making preparations against potential threats,” Kurtulmus told Reuters in an interview. “Their (YPG) primary goal is a threat to Turkey, and if Turkey sees a YPG movement in northern Syria that is a threat to it, it will retaliate in kind.”

President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey was ready to carry out ground operations against Kurdish forces in northern Syria along with the rebel forces it backs there if necessary.

“If there is a threat against us, our troops will conduct any operations with the Free Syrian Army (FSA) on the ground,” he told France 24 television in an interview shown later on Wednesday.

Turkish forces deployed in northern Syria last year in support of FSA groups in an operation that forced Islamic State away from the border and also drove a wedge between YPG-held areas.

In recent weeks, Turkey has sent reinforcements into the area north of Aleppo, according to Turkey-backed rebel groups who have established control over a section of the Turkish-Syrian frontier with Ankara’s support.

Hemo was last week cited as saying the YPG had a plan to capture that area between the towns of Azaz and Jarablus. Asked about that remark, he described the Turkish intervention as “occupation” of Syrian land, and said the YPG had never “threatened Turkey or its security”.

LONG-TERM PLANS

Turkey, a NATO member, has been incensed by the U.S. decision to ally with the YPG. Washington took the decision to arm the group before the final assault on Raqqa began in June.

The YPG is fighting under the banner of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which includes Arab fighters.

In separate comments to the Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat newspaper published on Wednesday, Hemo said the United States had established seven military bases in areas of northern Syria controlled by the YPG or SDF, including a major airbase near Kobani, a town at the border with Turkey.

Citing operational security, the coalition said it did not confirm or deny information about “specific capabilities, force numbers, locations or movement of forces in Iraq and Syria”.

Hemo indicated the YPG would keep fighting Islamic State even after its defeat in Raqqa, saying it was committed with “the international coalition to cleansing Syria of terrorism and establishing a political system capable of achieving real democratic transformation”.

Turkish defence ministry sources said last month the United States had pledged that weapons provided to the YPG would be taken back once Islamic State was defeated. Turkey says that is not credible.

“There has never been an incident where a group in the Middle East has been armed, and they returned the weapons,” Kurtulmus said. The United States “have formed more than a terrorist organisation there, they formed a small-scale army.”

He also warned the YPG not to try to drive out Arab or Turkmen residents from the town of Tel Rifaat, which is close to Afrin and controlled by YPG and Arab allies in the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has left open the possibility of longer-term assistance to the YPG, saying the U.S. may need to supply them with weapons and equipment even after the capture of Raqqa.

Hemo said U.S. officials had denied any intention to take away the YPG’s weapons and that the YPG would be needing more support due to its longer-term plans to tackle the remnants of Islamic State.

The Islamic State militant group (ISIS) has deployed dozens of female suicide bombers as it fights to hold onto Mosul, in what could be one the largest cases of women carrying out suicide operations in battle, like reported by newsweek.com.

Thirty-eight women have detonated suicide explosives to target civilians and enemy forces in the northern Iraqi city in the past month, and at least 20 of those have done so since Sunday, an Iraqi security official told The Times of London.

The toll comes after two female suicide bombers killed at least one Iraqi solider and wounded five more on Monday. On Sunday, a bomber dressed in women’s conservative Islamic clothing blew herself up after hiding among civilians fleeing Mosul.

The group remains trapped on all sides and is making its last stand to hold onto the city that propelled it to the height of the global jihad.

The Times of London dubbed the women “jihadist brides” who had typically stayed at home in Iraq, but experts say women are becoming more active in radical Islamist circles, wishing to also take part in jihad on a par with men.

The phenomenon is not limited to Iraq; European officials have said they have underestimated the threat of female militants in Europe and the role they wish to play when they return to their home countries from conflict zones.

Women have been carrying out suicide attacks long before the existence of ISIS, for example Chechnya’s “Black Widows” in the early 2000s, Palestinian women in the second Intifada, or uprising, and Boko Haram’s use of women in its insurgency in northern Nigeria. But the sheer number of suicide attacks by women in the Iraqi city in such a short period of time appears to be unprecedented.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi hailed his forces’ “big victory” in Mosul on Monday night, even though battles were still ongoing for the remaining pockets of ISIS-held territory, as they have been for the past eight months.

ISIS could lose the city, the largest in its self-styled caliphate, in a matter of days.

Iraqi special forces on Thursday captured the severely damaged Al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul, almost three years to the day that ISIS’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi stood at its pulpit and declared the creation of the Islamic State.

The 12th-century mosque, known for its leaning al-Hadba minaret, is in central Mosul’s Old City and has been adorned with ISIS’s black flag since June 2014.

The group has used sniper fire, suicide car bombs, booby traps and even unmanned drones to slow the advancing forces backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes.

The Iraqi military estimates that around 300 ISIS fighters remain in the last pockets of control in the city, but are surrounded on all sides.

Kurdish sources confirmed the presence of seven US military bases and airports in the Arab-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) areas, eastern Syria, like reported by aawsat.com.

Commander of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) Sipan Hamo told Asharq Al-Awsat that the US army established military bases, airports and centers in seven locations controlled by the SDF and the YPG, east the Euphrates River, mainly in Kubani, where a large and developed airport was already built.

The list also involves two airports in Hasaka, an airport in Kamishli, two others in al-Malikiya and one in Tel Abiyad at the Turkish border, in addition to a military contingent in Manbij, in the countryside of Aleppo.

At those bases, there are around 1300 fighters from the US-led Coalition deployed to combat ISIS.

Separately, Hamo said that Turkey launched a military operation in Afrin in the countryside of Aleppo that would negatively affect the battle to liberate Raqqa from ISIS.

He spoke about “complicity” planned under the table between the Syrian regime, Russia and Turkey.

“Russia and Syrian regime forces, which claim protecting the border and sovereignty of the country, were allowing Turkey to infiltrate, enter and attack the countryside of Aleppo without making any clear positions on what is happening,” Hamo said.

Meanwhile, the fifth round of the Astana talks on Syria kicked off Tuesday in the Kazakh capital.

Russian Presidential Special Representative for Syrian Settlement Alexander Lavrentyev said on Tuesday that Russia might deploy its police to monitor the borders of the planned de-escalation zones in Syria within two to three weeks after finalizing an agreement with Turkey and Iran.

Russia had established a new base at the Khirbat Ras al Wa’r, in eastern Damascus, in addition to Moscow’s two other bases in Tartus and Hmeimim.

Also on Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron telephoned the head of the High Negotiations Committee that represents the Syrian opposition in the international political process, Riyad Hijab, who had warned from “the threats caused by Iran and its linked militias’ escalatory measures and their plans to push towards division in Syria.”