Expelled from Deir Ezzor
Rival opposition groups including the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra Front expel ISIS from the province of Deir Ezzor. The oil-producing province is also a key conduit for weapons across the Iraqi border. The Al-Nusra Front, which has largely stayed out of conflicts with ISIS, joined about 10 other militant groups to expel the extremist faction.
Withdraws from Aleppo
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports that ISIS’s headquarters in Aleppo have been overtaken by rival opposition:
Fighters from several Islamist rebel brigades took control of the children’s hospital in the Qadi Askar district, which is the headquarters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in the city.
The extremist group has effectively abandoned the area:
ISIL withdrew from the Inzarat area after clashes with fighters from rebel… brigades, and the post office building was taken over by Islamist rebel fighters … There are hardly any ISIL members left in the city of Aleppo.
Ousted from Raqaa
Mainstream rebel groups force ISIS out of Anbar provincial capital Raqaa, freeing at least 50 hostages that include journalists and aid workers taken captive by the group. ISIS remains in control of the Anbar cities of Ramadi and Falluja – where it is surrounded by the Iraqi military – but the fall of Raqaa means it has lost much of the territory in Turkish border areas that it has held for six months after seizing it from the other rebel groups. Many ISIS members are now said to be defecting to join Syrian Al Qaeda arm the Al-Nusra Front or more mainstream rebel groups including the remnants of the Free Syrian Army.
Ousted from Aleppo, Idlib
Rival opposition factions strike back at ISIS after its moves to seize territory they have claimed from regime forces in Aleppo and Idlib provinces. Raqqa-based Sham News Network media activist Abu Bakr:
The rebels have achieved tremendous progress against ISIS in all the points of conflict, liberating more than 80% of the Idlib countryside and 65% of Aleppo and its countryside
Mohammad Hassano, an activist in the town of Azaz:
People just couldn’t take it anymore, after all the kidnapping and arrests and attacks against the [Free Syrian Army]. People were very angry at them, but there was hesitation in fighting them because of the priority of fighting the regime.
Captures town from rival opposition
ISIS fighters seize the northern town of Azaz near the Turkish border from Free Syrian Army forces, causing confusion among the ranks of the opposition. FSA spokesman Loay al-Mikdad says the group took the town from Assad regime forces in self-defence and questions why ISIS are storming an area that is already ‘liberated’:
They said they came to defend the Syrian people. Now they have turned their guns away from fighting the regime to fighting the Syrian people.
Asked to leave northern town
Six of Syria’s main rebel factions ask ISIS to withdraw from the town of Azaz, near the Turkish border, which it captured several days earlier from Free Syrian Army rebels. The statement asks “our brothers in ISIL to withdraw their troops and vehicles to their main headquarters immediately” and implement an “immediate ceasefire” in the area. Signed by the Ahrar al-Sham, Liwa al-Tawhid and Jaysh al-Islam factions, and the smaller Suqur al-Sham, Furqan Brigades and Liwa al-Haq groups, it comes hours after the group clashes with the mainstream Northern Front Alliance and sends fighters towards a border post. ISIS and the Northern Front are asked to…
…resort immediately to the Islamic court, which will remain in session in Aleppo for 48 hours
Forced to watch snuff videos
Human Rights Watch says ISIS forced 153 boys as young as 14 in Kobani to watch videos of beheadings and crucifixions while listening to religious lectures, and flogged them with cables for not paying attention. Former prisoner:
Those who didn’t conform to the program were beaten. They beat us with a green hose or a thick cable with wire running through it. They also beat the soles of our feet.
Released
U.S. forces release Al-Baghdadi from Camp Bucca, the biggest U.S. detention camp in Iraq. Kenneth King, commander at the time:
We spent how many missions and how many soldiers were put at risk when we caught this guy and we just released him.
Al-Baghdadi is not viewed as a threat upon release:
He said, ‘I’ll see you guys in New York,’ like, ‘This is no big thing, I’ll see you on the block’