A suicide attack claimed by the Islamic State group killed two Iraqi generals on Thursday in the key battleground province of Anbar, as the jihadists made gains in northern Syria.

IS overran large areas of Iraq in 2014 and seized Anbar capital Ramadi earlier this year. It also controls major territory in neighbouring Syria, where it has thrived amid a bloody civil war.

Military spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Rasool said a suicide bomber in an explosives-rigged vehicle struck the Al-Jaraishi area north of Ramadi as Iraqi forces advanced.

The attack killed the deputy head of the Anbar Operations Command, Staff Major General Abdulrahman Abu Raghif, and 10th Division commander Staff Brigadier General Safin Abdulmajid, Rasool said.

IS claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement online, but gave a different account of how it unfolded, saying it was carried out by four suicide bombers and two supporting gunmen who targeted the main command headquarters north of Ramadi.

It said all six of the jihadists were killed.

A statement from the Iraqi Joint Operations Command confirmed the deaths of the two officers along with an unspecified number of other "heroic martyrs".

The death or injury of senior Iraqi officers during battles against IS is a persistent problem for the country.

Two heads of the Anbar Operations Command have been wounded this year, while the commanders of a division and a brigade were killed in Anbar in April. The province's governor was wounded in 2014.

Senior army and police commanders have also been killed in other Iraqi provinces since IS launched its devastating offensive in June 2014, sweeping security forces aside.

- IS advances in Syria -

Baghdad's forces have managed to regain significant territory in two provinces north of the capital, but much of western Iraq, including Anbar, remains outside government control.

In Syria, IS fighters seized five villages from rebel forces overnight in the northern province of Aleppo and entered the outskirts of a key opposition bastion there, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The jihadist group seized three villages near the town of Marea and entered its southern outskirts, and took another two villages further north in Aleppo province, near the border with Turkey, it said.

Those two villages were previously controlled by Al-Nusra Front, Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, which withdrew from them after Turkey and the United States announced plans to cooperate on an IS-free zone in the area.

Marea is one of the most significant rebel-held towns in northern Aleppo and lies on a key supply route running to the Turkish border.

IS has targeted the town for months, seeking to expand westwards from territory it already holds in Aleppo province.

The Observatory said there were reports of dozens of rebel casualties in the fighting, but it had no immediate toll.

Activists and medical organisations said this week they had documented an alleged chemical weapons attack, possibly involving mustard gas, on the town last Friday. Activists accused IS of being behind the attack.

- Local truce -

The IS advances come despite an agreement between Turkey and the United States to work on the establishment of an IS-free zone in northern Aleppo.

The plan has backing from some rebel forces on the ground, including the powerful Islamist Ahrar al-Sham movement, which Washington does not work with.

But Al-Nusra has rejected the proposal, despite its opposition to IS, and earlier this month withdrew from its front lines against its jihadist rival in Aleppo in order to avoid cooperating with the plan.

Elsewhere in Syria, the Observatory said that a new 48-hour truce between regime forces and rebels entered into force in three towns on Thursday.

The new two-day truce follows a similar ceasefire earlier this month for the towns that was intended to lead to a broad agreement to end the fighting in Zabadani and the blockade of Fuaa and Kafraya.

Pro-regime forces, including Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah militia, launched an offensive to seize Zabadani from rebel groups early last month.

The town is the last rebel-held bastion in the area along the border with Lebanon and has been subjected to massive aerial bombardment since the operation began.

More than 240,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with peaceful anti-government protests.

Lebanon urged to create commission on disappearances
Beirut (AFP) Aug 29, 2015 - Lebanon should form a "national commission on disappearances" to investigate those still missing since the country's civil war, a rights group said Saturday.

On the eve of the UN's International Day of the Disappeared, Human Rights Watch also called on Lebanon to prosecute recent cases of enforced disappearances on its territory and ratify the UN's relevant convention.

"Despite repeated promises, Lebanese authorities have yet to provide the families of the disappeared with any answers about the fate of their loved ones," said Nadim Houry, HRW's deputy Middle East director

"Lebanon cannot move forward without adequately dealing with its past."

The New York-based group said an estimated 17,000 Lebanese were kidnapped or "disappeared" during the country's devastating civil war.

Scores of those "disappeared" during Syria's military presence in Lebanon after the war are believed to have been transferred to detention in Syria, HRW said.

Their families have continued to lobby for transparency regarding the fate of their relatives.

They have drafted a bill to create a national commission to investigate those cases, but no government action has been taken.

HRW described enforced disappearances as "among the gravest crimes in international law and may constitute a crime against humanity if part of a bigger attack against the civilian population."