After a bloody assault Thursday, Islamic State fighters re-entered the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani, five months after Kurdish forces retook the strategically important border city.
Approximately 32 militants drove five cars through Kurdish lines in the early morning hours, then set off a large car bomb and a second one hours later, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group. The Islamic State fighters attacked from three sides wearing Kurdish and Free Syrian Army uniforms and several blew themselves up using explosive belts.
In the ensuing chaos, fierce fighting erupted between the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Islamic State militants, leading to dozens of people being killed or wounded, the group reported.
“Fierce clashes erupted afterwards in the centre of the town and there are bodies lying in the streets,” said Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdulrahman.
Twenty Syrian Kurds, including women and children, were brutally executed on Thursday by Islamic State fighters in Barkh Butan, a village south of Kobani, a monitor from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
Islamic State militants are now “driving around Kobani’s alleys and streets killing civilians,” according to Iraqi-based Kurdish news channel Rudaw.
The Islamic State also moved a convoy of nearly 100 military vehicles packed with fighters, arms and ammunition from the countryside east of the terror group’s capital city of Raqqa to one of the group’s bases within the city, said Abdulrahman.
Six months ago, Kurdish forces captured Kobani with the assistance of the Free Syrian Army and heavy U.S.-led coalition bombing after four months of intense fighting. Anwar Muslim, the prime minister of the self-declared Kurdish canton of Kobani, said at the time that the YPG’s capture of the town was “the beginning of the end for Daesh [a pejorative Arabic term for the Islamic State.]” U.S. officials have frequently pointed to that victory as a symbol of Kurdish and American ability to defeat the Islamic State.
Islamic State militants also launched a similar attack against Syrian regime forces Thursday at al-Hasakah, 170 miles east of Kobani. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported at least 30 Syrian regime forces were killed and 20 Islamic State militants were dead, numbers that CNN could not confirm.
At a Syrian military checkpoint, Islamic State militants detonated at least one car bomb and have taken control of some neighborhoods in the southern part of the city, according to the monitoring group, while the Syrian air force is conducting airstrikes in the area.
The Islamic State’s aggressive pushback comes after recent losses in the Syrian cities of Ain Issa and Tal Abyad, and in the wake of the Kurdish force’s offensive to capture the Islamic State’s de-facto capital of Raqqa, a city they are just 34 miles away from.
Reportedly, the militants are digging trenches and calling for reinforcements to defend Raqqa, activists and a Kurdish official told CNN.
The attack on Kobani and al-Hasakah represents a “classic” Islamic State strategy of diversion, drawing YPG forces away from Raqqa, observed analyst Charles Lister of the Brookings Doha Center.
“Islamic State’s morale has collapsed after the advance in the Raqqa countryside,” YPG spokesperson Redur Xelil, told the Guardian. “They are trying to raise the morale of their fighters and supporters, and show that they still have strength and can strike out elsewhere.”
