Syrian rebels backed by Turkey captured the symbolically important village of Dabiq in northwestern Syria from Islamic State early on Sunday after clashes, Ahmed Osman, head of the Sultan Murad rebel group and a war monitor said.

The rebels also captured Dabiq’s neighbouring village of Soran, Osman and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Dabiq is named in an apocalyptic Islamic prophesy as the site of a final battle between Muslims and infidels.