Syria Islamist militants pause and reinforce from Iraq

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The Syria branch of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has put fighting on hold in Syria while it brings in ******* seized inside neighbouring Iraq, a monitoring group that tracks the violence said on Friday. ISIL, a Sunni Islamist splinter of al Qaeda, has battled rival rebel groups in Syria for months and clashed occasionally with President Bashar al-Assad's forces. But its fighters appear to hold back in Syria this week, especially in their eastern stronghold near the Iraqi border, while their Iraqi wing was making rapid military gains. Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that ISIL may have negotiated a truce with rival rebel brigades in Syria, although it was still laying siege to parts of the eastern city of Deir al-Zor, where Assad's forces and al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front rebels are also dug in.

أكثر... (https://en-maktoob.news.yahoo.com/syria-islamist-militants-pause-reinforce-iraq-103429745.html)