Air strikes by US-led coalition warplanes and artillery fire from Turkey killed eight ISIS militants in northern Syria, state-run Anadolu Agency cited the Turkish military as saying on Sunday.



Ten ISIS targets were hit in the strikes, which also destroyed one building used by the militants as a base, the agency said.



It said Turkish army howitzers fired on the militants as they were preparing to open fire on Turkey on Saturday from the areas of Baragitah, Tel Ahmar and Shabaniye in northern Syria.



Turkey and the coalition have carried out regular strikes against ISIS in the area in recent months after rocket attacks by the militants on the Turkish border town of Kilis.



Kilis, just across the frontier from an ISIS-controlled region of Syria, has been hit by rockets more than 70 times this year. More than 20 people have been killed.

Twenty-nine Syria rebels dead in fighting for key Aleppo road

Meanwhile, at least 29 Syrian rebels were killed in clashes with regime troops overnight during a failed bid to reopen the opposition’s key supply route into Aleppo city, a monitor said Sunday.

The fighters from the Faylaq al-Sham Islamist faction and al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front were killed trying to reopen the Castello Road, which regime forces effectively severed on Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.

The road was the only remaining supply route into the opposition-held east of Aleppo city, which has been divided between government and rebel control since mid-2012.

Government forces effectively severed the route on Thursday when they seized a hilltop within firing range of the Castello Road.

The Observatory said there were deaths among government forces in the overnight fighting, but had no immediate toll.

“The attack has ended and the road remains completely closed,” said Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman.

Kurdish militant bomb attack on Turkish army outpost kills two

Kurdish militants carried out a car bomb attack on a military outpost in southeastern Turkey overnight, killing one soldier and a member of the state-sponsored village guard militia, security sources said on Sunday.



It was the second such attack within 12 hours in the mainly Kurdish region, showing no let-up in a conflict between the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group and the state which flared up a year ago when a two-year-old ceasefire collapsed.



Ten soldiers and five village guards were also wounded in the attack by PKK guerrillas which took place in the Ercis district of Van province at 00:20 am (2120 GMT), the sources said. The army launched an operation to catch the perpetrators.



Around midday on Saturday a bomb attack on a similar military installation in the province of Mardin bordering Syria killed two soldiers and a civilian and wounded dozens.



More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict since the PKK, designated a terrorist group by Turkey and its Western allies, and began its insurgency in 1984. Just in the last year, thousands of militants, security force members and civilians have died.



Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency reported on Saturday that senior PKK commander Fehman Huseyin had been killed in a bomb attack on a car in which he was travelling in northeast Syria. The report has not been confirmed.



Huseyin, a Syrian Kurd also known by the code name Bahoz Erdal, was killed on Friday evening as he travelled to the northern Syrian city of Qamishli, Anadolu said, citing a spokesman of a Syrian rebel group it named as the Tel Khamis Brigades.

Last Update: Wednesday, 20 May 2020 KSA 09:47 - GMT 06:47