Al Qaeda offshoot in Syria rampage
As President Barack Obama vowed Wednesday to help fight the influx of extremists vying for control in Syria's three-year civil war, anti-government fighters reported that jihadists in an eastern village methodically set fire to the homes and farms of those who openly opposed a hardline al Qaeda offshoot, CNN reported.
The act of retaliation is the latest in an offensive by the rogue Islamic State of Iraq and Syria to capture rebel-held territory in the oil-rich Deir Ezzour area along the Iraqi border.
If ISIS successfully wrests control of the border province, the extremist group notorious for its extreme interpretation of Sharia law is set to feed a comeback campaign across the country by establishing a supply route connecting its bastion in the western Syrian city of Raqqah with its home base in Iraq.
"ISIS intends to resurge everywhere," Valerie A. Szybala, a Syria analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, tells CNN.
"Deir Ezzour is just the first on the list of priorities because it is rich in oil and because of its strategic importance as a transit between Iraq and Syria."
To combat the push by ISIS, 12 rebel battalions including al-Nusra Front, a powerful al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, formed the Mujahideen Shura Council in eastern Deir Ezzour, earlier this week.
"We found the only solution is for us to unite against ISIS. So all the battalions that were fighting them united financially, militarily and administratively and now work out of the same operation room," Jassem Alkraty, a media activist linked to anti-ISIS insurgent groups, told CNN via Skype from eastern Deir Ezzour.