ISIL steps up attacks on Kurds in Syria
Militants launch two-pronged assault after suffering recent defeats
BEIRUT — ISIL militants launched major attacks in northern Syria on Thursday after a string of recent setbacks, storming government-held areas in a mostly Kurdish city and setting off deadly car bombs as they pushed into a border town they were expelled from six months ago.
The two-pronged counteroffensive left dozens of people dead or wounded. On one front, ISIL fighters advanced early in the morning into the northeastern city of Hassakeh, long split between Syrian Kurds and government forces, capturing parts of it.
The other push was into the Syrian border town of Kobani, which famously resisted a months-long ISIL assault before the extremists were driven out in January. An activist group said 12 people died in fighting Thursday in Kobani — the first time in six months ISIL had managed to enter the town along the Turkish border — and that the militants had detonated three car bombs.
In the Kobani attack, the extremists donned Syrian rebel uniforms and carried flags of the mainstream Free Syrian Army to deceive the town’s Kurdish defenders, said Redur Khalil, a spokesman for the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG. In Hassakeh, Khalil said ISIL militants attacked government-held neighbourhoods on the southern edge of the town, capturing some areas.
Syrian state TV reported intense clashes inside Hassakeh’s southern neighbourhood of Nashawi. According to the report, ISIL fighters killed several people they captured in the city, including the head of a military housing institution. It said the militants sustained many casualties, including the commander of the group, who is a foreign fighter. An activist group said many people in neighbourhoods engulfed in the fighting fled to safer areas in the city.
ISIL tried to storm the city earlier this month and reached its southern outskirts before facing strong resistance from Syrian government troops who pushed them away.
The Hassakeh and Kobani attacks came just days after YPG fighters and their allies captured the ISIL stronghold of Tal Abyad on the border with Turkey and the town of Ein Issa to the south. Kurdish fighters have been advancing since January under the cover of air strikes by the U.S.-led coalition.
In neighbouring Iraq, troops drove ISIL militants from Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit in April, but lost Ramadi, the capital of the western Anbar province, last month.
ISIL captured large parts of both Syria and Iraq a year ago. A major ISIL attack was widely expected during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began last week.
In an audio message Tuesday, ISIL spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani urged Sunni Muslims to wage jihad and seek martyrdom during Ramadan, a month of dawn-to-dusk fasting.
“Attack them everywhere and shake the ground beneath them,” he said. It was not possible to verify the recording, but it resembled previous audio statements from the group.
Al-Adnani referred to the recent battlefield setbacks for ISIL, saying the faithful “may lose a battle or battles and may lose towns and areas, but will never be defeated.”
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said three car bombs were set off in the Kobani attack.
The Observatory, which relies on activists inside Syria, said 35 civilians and Kurdish fighters were killed in Kobani on Thursday, along with 14 ISIL extremists.