(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Shelling killed 19 civilians yesterday as Syria's Kurds fought a fierce battle against jihadists from the Islamic State in the northeastern province of Hasakeh, a monitoring group said. Among the civilians killed in Hajiyeh and Tal Khalil villages were five children, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The deaths came as the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) advanced in their fight against IS, seizing a string of villages around jihadist bastion Tal Hamis, which is strategically important because of its proximity to the main Kurdish city of Qamishli.
Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said that the YPG, backed by Arab tribesmen opposed to IS, and IS fighters were using "all kinds of shells" to target opposing positions in the fighting. "It is impossible to confirm who was behind the shelling that killed the 19 civilians," he said.
The Observatory earlier reported air strikes by the Syrian Air Force against jihadist targets in Hasakeh province late on Saturday and yesterday morning.
Kurdish fighters were the first in Syria to battle IS. They were followed by rebels seeking President Bashar Al Assad's overthrow and the regime has recently stepped up its own campaign against IS, carrying out near-daily air strikes against jihadist positions. The developments in Hasakeh come a day after an air strike on an IS training camp in jihadist-held Deir Ezzor killed 17 militants and a child, the Observatory said.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State John Kerry said that the United States will not coordinate air attacks on Islamic State militants with Syria but will seek to ensure their forces do not come into conflict. "We will certainly want to deconflict and make certain that they're (Syria) not about to do something that they might regret even more seriously," Kerry said in the interview on CBS's Face the Nation. "But we're not going to coordinate, it's not a cooperative effort."
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