Turkey-backed rebels capture key symbolic stronghold from IS

Syrian opposition fighters take Dabiq, the site where apocalyptic Muslim-Christian battle is predicted, as jihadists retreat

Turkish-backed rebel fighters on Sunday captured the northern Syrian town of Dabiq from the Islamic State jihadist group, a monitoring group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebels “captured Dabiq after IS members withdrew from the area.”

Dabiq holds crucial ideological importance for IS because of a Sunni prophecy that states it will be the site of an end-of-times battle between Christian forces and Muslims.

The town — after which Islamic State’s English-language magazine is named — is often cited in IS propaganda.

It lies some 10 kilometers (six miles) from the Syrian-Turkish border.

The town itself has negligible military value compared with the strategic IS-controlled cities of Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq.

Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said the fighters also captured the nearby town of Sawran.

Fighters from the Free Syrian Army fire an anti-aircraft machine gun mounted on a vehicle deploy during fighting against the Islamic State (IS) group jihadists in the northern Syrian village of Yahmoul in the Marj Dabiq area north of the embattled city of Aleppo on October 10, 2016.(AFP PHOTO / Nazeer al-Khatib)

One Turkey-backed rebel faction, the Fastaqim Union, also said Dabiq had fallen “after fierce clashes with Daesh,” using the Arabic acronym for IS.

It published pictures on Twitter of a group of fighters on the back of a small white truck waving assault rifles in the air, with the town of Dabiq apparently in the background.

News of Dabiq’s capture came a day after a US-hosted meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, of top envoys from Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Qatar, Iraq, Egypt and Jordan, aimed at creating a new, multilateral track for ending Syria’s grinding war.

Syrian rebel fighters ride in the back of a pick-up truck flying an Islamist flag in the northern Syrian village of Rael after they captured it from the Islamic State (IS) group in the Marj Dabiq area north of the embattled city of Aleppo on October 9, 2016.(AFP PHOTO / Nazeer al-Khatib)

The talks came amid heightened urgency about the city of Aleppo, the latest flashpoint in a war that has killed up to a half-million people, sparked a refugee crisis and offered a territorial base to the radical Islamic State group.

Kerry’s new approach comes after last month’s US-Russian bid to end the war collapsed in days as Syrian forces backed by Russian air power launched an offensive on rebel-held parts of Aleppo.

The multilateral talks will continue in the coming days.