Rebels close on ISIL-held Dabiq in Syria, 15 killed

Syrian rebels backed by Turkey and a U.S.-led coalition are closing in on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)-held village of Dabiq, the site of an apocalyptic prophesy central to the militant group's ideology, while 15 Ankara-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters have been killed in the past one day during clashes with the jihadists as part of the ongoing Euphrates Shield operation. 

A rebel leader said the plan was to reach Dabiq within 48 hours, but cautioned that ISIL had heavily mined the surrounding area, a sign of its importance to the group. 

"If matters proceed as planned, within 48 hours we will be in Dabiq," Ahmed Osman, commander of the Sultan Murad FSA group, told Reuters. 

However, ISIL has heavily mined the area, making progress around Turkman Bareh slower than in other areas, he said. 
The U.S.-led coalition against ISIL is actively supporting the rebels as they advance "to within a few kilometers of ISIL's weakening stronghold [of] Dabiq," Brett McGurk, Washington's special envoy for the coalition, said in a Tweet on Oct. 2. 

Washington believes taking Dabiq could strike at ISIL's morale as it prepares to fend off expected offensives against Iraq's Mosul and Syria's Raqqa, the largest cities held by the jihadists, officials from a coalition country said. 

Although Dabiq, a village in relatively flat countryside northeast of Aleppo, holds little strategic value, it is seen by ISIL as the place where a final battle will take place between Muslims and infidels, heralding Doomsday. 

The group has named its online English-language magazine Dabiq and in April and May sent about 800 fighters there to defend it against advances by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Syrian...