AFP, BEIRUT: Syrian Kurds and allied rebels advanced against the Islamic State group yesterday, capturing a strategic town a day after seizing a base from the jihadists near their Raqa bastion.
A spokesman for the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) and a Britain-based monitor said the anti-IS forces had taken Ain Issa, after capturing the nearby Brigade 93 base overnight.
"In the last few moments, Ain Issa has come under our full control, along with dozens of villages in the surrounding area," YPG spokesman Redur Khalil said.
Ain Issa's fall comes after IS ceded control of the Brigade 93 base on Monday night and the border town of Tal Abyad more than a week ago. Ain Issa and Brigade 93 are around 55 kilometres north of Raqa, the de facto capital of IS's self-declared Islamic "caliphate" in Syria and Iraq.
They both lie on a main highway that runs between Kurdish-held territory in Aleppo province to the west and Hasakeh province to the east. The same route  links territory held by the IS group in Aleppo and Hasakeh provinces.
The YPG-rebel advance has been backed by air power from the US-led coalition fighting IS.  On June 16, they captured Tal Abyad on the Turkish border, which had served as a key conduit for bringing in fighters and arms  and exporting black market oil.
Elsewhere, Syria's antiquities chief yesterday confirmed IS had destroyed two ancient religious mausoleums in the old city of Palmyra.
Maamoun Abdulkarim said the extremists had blown up the tombs of Mohamed bin Ali and Nizar Abu Bahaaeddine, two Muslim figures. The jihadists consider tombstones and mausoleums to be a violation of its strict interpretation of Islamic law.
The Syrian army on Monday reopened a key oil supply route near Islamic State-controlled Palmyra, as the jihadist group has mined the city's ancient UNESCO-listed ruins.
However, the advance toward the central city from the west, reported by a pro-government newspaper and a monitoring group, and stepped up air strikes, do not indicate an imminent offensive to retake it.
"The infantry has made tangible progress in the area of Biyarat al-Gharbiyeh, west of Palmyra, which had previously been in IS hands,” said Al-Watan newspaper.
IS overran Palmyra on May 21, sparking fears that the radical Sunni Muslim group might repeat the sort of vandalism it has carried out in Iraq and destroy one of Syria's most famous archaeological sites. The jihadists have laid mines in the spectacular Greco-Roman ruins of Palmyra.