(MENAFN- Arab Times) Syrian Kurdish fighters said they had fully secured the town of Kobani near the Turkish border on Saturday and killed more than 60 Islamic State militants, two days after the hardline group launched an incursion with suicide bombers as civilian death toll reached 200.
Further east, Islamic State pressed another assault on government-held areas of Hasaka city, clashing with the Syrian army after blowing up a security building late on Friday and triggering a government appeal for residents to take up arms. "The people of the governorate and its surroundings continue to sign up with the Syrian Arab Army in its fight against terror," state television said in a news flash on Saturday and played archive footage of soldiers set to rousing music.
Hasaka's governor described the situation as "fine" but also called on residents to defend it in a phone call with state TV. The twin assaults on Kobani and Hasaka came after Islamic State suffered two weeks of defeats at the hands of Kurdish-led forces, supported by US-led air strikes. Redur Xelil, spokesman for the Kurdish YPG militia, said Kobani was quiet and the YPG was combing the town for any hidden Islamic State fighters. The YPG blew up a school building used by Islamic State in the town earlier on Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said, and plumes of smoke could be seen from from the Turkish side of the border rising into the air. The Observatory said a US-led airstrike killed at least 18 Islamic State fighters near Kobani.
Islamic State killed around 200 civilians since the assault which started on Thursday, the Observatory said, describing it as one of the worst massacres committed by the group in Syria. In Syria's northeast, Kurdish forces and the army fought separate battles with the group around the city overnight. The YPG's Xelil said the Kurds were not fighting with Islamic State on Saturday.
The Observatory said fierce battles continued in the southwest, south and southeast on Saturday. Islamic State launched its offensive on government-held areas of Hasaka on Thursday and the United Nations says the violence is estimated to have displaced up to 120,000 people. "We want to reassure people in the governorate"Hasaka is fine," Governor Mohammad Zaal al-Ali told state TV but also echoed a government call for people to come back and defend their homes alongside the army. "All of the people of the governorate who want to, pick up arms to defend it," he added. He said the air force had been carrying out frequent bombardments against Islamic State. Meanwhile, Islamic State group jihadists have killed at least 40 Syrian government forces in consecutive attacks on three checkpoints in central Syria, a monitor said on Saturday.
In less than two hours of clashes on Friday, IS jihadists seized the checkpoints near Sheikh Hilal, a village in Syria's Hama province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. "The clashes killed 40 government loyalists, including soldiers and members of the National Defence Forces," a local proregime militia, said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman. He told AFP that the jihadists later withdrew from the checkpoints when it appeared that government forces in the region had called for reinforcements. "There's fighting almost every day in this area, but usually the toll is two or three people. Forty is very high," he told AFP.
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