The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces coalition of Syrian Arab and Kurdish fighters said Friday it had ejected the Islamic State group from a key position on the border with Iraq.

But elsewhere, in the northern province of Aleppo, regime forces advanced on the highway linking Aleppo city to Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human rights and a security source said.

"The Syrian Democratic Forces took control on Thursday of the village of Al-Hol on the IS supply route for arms and equipment from Iraq," SDF spokesman Colonel Talal Ali Sello told AFP.

"The streets are filled with bodies of jihadists, and other jihadists are fleeing towards Ash-Shadadi" to the southwest, he said.

"We have cut the supply route" for IS, said Sello.

"This is the biggest strategic victory, and it was achieved in complete coordination with the (US-led) international coalition, which carried out intensive (air) strikes," he said.

The offensive south of the Kurdish city of Hasakeh was launched on October 30 with the joint Arab-Kurdish force taking control of several villages before the capture of Al-Hol, which had been under IS rule since last year.

"This position was vital for jihadists in Iraq to cross to Syria on their way to Raqa," the de facto IS capital, according to Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman.

The Britain-based monitor reported regime successes in the south of Aleppo province on Friday.

"Regime forces backed by Hezbollah fighters took control of the Icarda area near the Aleppo-Damascus highway and have driven out Islamist fighters, mostly from Al-Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda," it said.

The advance is "the first strategic victory for regime forces since the beginning of military operations on October 7 in several provinces backed by Russian air strikes," Abdel Rahman said.

Several factions have controlled the highway since fighting erupted in Syria's second city in July 2012, leading to its division into rebel-held eastern and loyalist-controlled western sectors.

Over 250 coalition strikes backed Sinjar op in Iraq: spokesman
Baghdad (AFP) Nov 13, 2015 - US-led coalition aircraft carried out more than 250 strikes in support of an operation by Iraqi Kurdish forces to retake Sinjar from the Islamic State group, a spokesman said Friday.

"In Sinjar, the coalition has conducted over 250 air strikes" in support of the operation there, Colonel Steve Warren, the spokesman for the international operation against IS, told a news conference.

"We estimate we've killed over 200 enemy fighters in recent days," he said.

The operation to retake the northern town of Sinjar was led by the autonomous Kurdish region's peshmerga forces, and also involved fighters from the Yazidi minority, which IS had brutally targeted in the area.

Kurdish forces were able to cut Highway 47, one of IS's main supply routes linking territory it holds in Iraq and Syria, in the Sinjar area on Thursday, and moved into the town the following day.

Kurdish regional president Massud Barzani on Friday announced the "liberation of Sinjar" from IS at a news conference near the town.

IS overran Sinjar in August last year, forcing thousands of Yazidis to flee to the mountain overlooking the town, where they were trapped by the jihadists.

The United Nations has described the attack on the Yazidis as a possible genocide.

Aiding the Yazidis, whose unique faith IS considers heretical, was one of Washington's main justifications for starting its air campaign against the jihadists last year.