A rebel fighter fires a weapon as a fellow fighter covers his ears during clashes with forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad on the frontline of Aleppo's Sheikh Saeed neighbourhood.
AFP/Baghdad
The Islamic State group seized the Iraqi side of a key border crossing with Syria after isolated government forces pulled out, a police officer and a provincial official said.
"Daesh (IS) early this morning took control of the Al-Walid post on the border between Iraq and Syria after the withdrawal of the army and the Iraqi border police," a police colonel said.
The jihadists had seized the Syrian side, known as Al-Tanaf, three days earlier, leaving Iraqi forces guarding the remote outpost in Anbar province very vulnerable.
The police colonel said the government forces at Al-Walid temporarily pulled back to the nearby Trebil border crossing with Jordan.
IS fighters seized another border crossing between Al-Qaim in Anbar and Albu Kamal in Syria last year. The other crossing between the two countries is further north and controlled by Kurdish forces.
The head of Anbar's border commission confirmed that government forces had pulled out of Al-Walid.
"There was no military support for the security forces and there weren't enough of them to protect the crossing," Suad Jassem said.
"Daesh now controls both sides of both crossings," she said, referring to Al-Walid/Al-Tanaf and Al-Qaim/Albu Kamal.
A member of the border guard that pulled back to Trebil said a double suicide car bomb attack on Al-Walid prompted the retreat.
"Daesh attacked us early this morning with two suicide car bombs coming from the Syrian side. There were no casualties among our forces luckily," said Marwan al-Hadithi.
"We tried to shoot them with the heavy machinegun but it was in vain because they were heavily armoured with steel plates," he said from Trebil.
"We know their methods. They start with car bombs and after that they break in," he said, adding that his unit had repeatedly asked for more manpower.
"We were ready to withdraw. We had decided that we would stay if any reinforcements reached us and that we would withdraw at the first attack we are exposed to if we received no reinforcements," he said.
The Islamic State group controls the nearby Iraqi town of Rutba, which commands access to the only road leading to other parts of the country.
Al-Walid was effectively cut off from the rest of the country and Hadithi explained that security forces would rotate out by crossing into Syria and flying back to Iraq or embarking on a long road journey along the Saudi border.
