ISIS shock troops terrorize Kobani

Fanatical and disciplined, a unit of Islamic State group fighters infiltrated the border town of Kobani last month and unleashed mayhem, battling Kurdish forces.

In the end, the militants were all killed but not before they had accomplished their mission of spreading fear by slaughtering more than 230 civilians, nearly half of them children.

These are ISIS’s elite shock troops, known as Inghemasiyoun, a sort of special forces unit parallel to its regular forces. They fight to the death, wearing explosives belts to blow themselves up among their opponents if they face defeat.

They are credited with many of the group’s battlefield successes. In the case of the attack on Kobani late last month, the aim was to underscore with blood that the town was not safe even after Kurdish forces wrested it from ISIS control earlier this year.

But the special forces fighters have also been the vanguard repeated in ISIS attacks to capture territory.