ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Islamic State (ISIS) managed to recapture the town of Al-Rai on the Syrian border with Turkey on Monday morning. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor reported that the town fell to ISIS after violent clashes with rebels. A coalition of rebels and militants, including the al-Qaeda affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, had managed to force ISIS from the town just last Thursday. "The fact that the rebels could not hold on to al-Rai shows that it is impossible to maintain an advance against ISIS without adequate air cover," the Observatory's director, Rami Abdul Rahman, told AFP. Al-Rai is important to the militants because it is located on the road to ISIS-controlled parts of Syria's Aleppo province. Turkish-backed rebel factions in Syria's northwest have managed to push ISIS out of more than a dozen villages along that stretch of Syrian-Turkish border territory.
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