Syria attacks to cut off Islamic State’s capital

BEIRUT – Syrian troops launched an offensive Saturday aimed at cutting off Islamic State’s stronghold of Raqqa from the Turkish border, a monitoring group said.

Troops and militiamen backed by Syrian and Russian warplanes pushed east from the regime outpost of Ithriya, coming within 25 miles of the Islamic State-held city of Tabqa and the main Raqqa-Aleppo road, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The offensive comes days after the Kurdish-led Democratic Forces of Syria, backed by U.S. airstrikes, launched an attack farther north, also aimed at blocking Raqqa, Islamic State’s capital, from its access routes to Turkey.

The Kurdish-led forces also are pushing toward Tabqa, near Syria’s largest dam, at the southern end of Lake Assad on the Euphrates River.

Observatory director Rami Abdel-Rahman said the Islamic State’s last border territory, known as the Minbij pocket, faced being surrounded by three hostile parties if the government offensive succeeds.

In addition to the regime forces in the south and the Kurdish-led forces advancing from the east, jihadists in the strategic border territory have been fighting mainly Islamist opposition forces on their western flank.