NATO’s secretary-general confirmed yesterday that the Western military alliance would join the US-led bombing coalition in Syria and Iraq.

Speaking at the Nato summit in Brussels, Jens Stoltenberg confirmed anonymous reports from the day before that the alliance would join Operation Inherent Resolve as a bloc.

But he claimed: “It does not mean that Nato will engage in combat operations.” Fewer than half the 28 member states currently do.

Stop the War Coalition convener Lindsey German said Western military interventions in the Middle East had only succeeded in fuelling terrorism.

“This Nato involvement, as previously, will do nothing to solve the problem but only make it worse,” she insisted.

In Syria and Iraq, those countries’ armed forces kept on hammering Isis — without the coalition’s help.

Two Syrian army fronts advancing from the east and west met in Khunayfis, southwest of Palmyra, eliminating a pocket of Isis resistance in the desert.

Troops, backed by low-flying attack jets and helicopters, pushed on southwards to link up with the front against US-backed Free Syrian Army insurgents trying to seize swathes of the country’s oil-rich east.

In Aleppo province, troops began encircling Maskanah on the River Euphrates to the south-west, while further east, Kurdish YPG guerillas tightened the noose on Raqqa, which Isis claims as its capital.

Iraqi Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU) militia said the Isis-occupied town of Tal Afar, west of Mosul, was now fully encircled after its troops linked up with Kurdish peshmerga fighters in Sinjar.

That followed the PMU’s liberation of Qairawan on Tuesday night.

Yesterday, the force continued its march towards the Syrian border, capturing more villages.

Isis is now boxed into three districts of central Mosul west of the River Tigris.