Turkish soldiers stand as smoke billows from the Syrian town of Ayn al-Arab or Kobani following the attacks by ISIS militants as seen from the Turkish side of the border in Suruc, Turkey, Thursday, June 25, 2015. ISIS militants launched two major attacks in northern Syria on Thursday, storming government-held areas in the mostly Kurdish city of Hassakeh and pushing into Kobani the Syrian Kurdish border town they were expelled from early this year where they set off three cars bombs, killing and wounding dozens, activists and officials said. AP
BEIRUT, Lebanon – Kurdish forces drove Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group fighters from the flashpoint Syrian border town of Kobani on Saturday, after a killing spree by the jihadists left more than 200 civilians dead.
Forces of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) stormed ISIS’s last remaining position, taking full control of Kobani, a powerful symbol of Kurdish resistance.
As they combed the streets for fugitive jihadists, the Kurds found more bodies, taking the civilian death toll to 206, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Local journalist Rudi Mohammad Amin told AFP that more civilians were still unaccounted for.
The jihadists made their last stand in a boys’ high school.
“The YPG detonated explosives outside of the school, then stormed it,” Amin said, speaking via the Internet from near Kobani on the border with Turkey.
“This military operation was carried out after ensuring that there were no civilians left in the school.”
Amin said he believed all the ISIS militants inside were killed.
The jihadists had entered Kobani at dawn on Thursday disguised in YPG uniforms and seized several buildings in the town’s south and southwest.
The YPG quickly surrounded the jihadist positions, but it took two days to re-establish control.
Some civilians were killed in the streets by rocket or sniper fire, and others were executed in their homes.
Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said the bodies found on Saturday bore bullet marks and appeared to include entire families.
“The bodies were found littered in homes and in the streets, lying here and there,” he said.
The toll included at least 180 civilians killed in Kobani itself, and another 26 executed in a nearby village.
At least 300 people were wounded.
The ISIS operation was widely seen as vengeance for a series of defeats at the hands of Kurdish militia, particularly the jihadists’ loss of Tal Abyad, another border town further east, on June 16.
“ISIS doesn’t want to take over the town. They just came to kill the highest number of civilians in the ugliest ways possible,” local journalist Mostafa Ali told AFP on Friday.
A total of 16 Kurdish fighters and 54 jihadists were also killed.
The Observatory chief said that ISIS had achieved its objective.
“You cannot call this last operation a real defeat for ISIS, because it did what it wanted to in Kobani,” Abdel Rahman said.
In January, Kurdish forces backed by rebel groups and US-led air strikes pushed ISIS out of Kobani after four months of fierce fighting in a hugely symbolic defeat for the jihadists.
Further east, government forces launched a counter-attack Saturday against ISIS in the provincial capital of Hasakeh, on the third day of intense clashes.
Hasakeh civilians flee
According to the UN, at least 120,000 people have been displaced by the fighting in the city, which had a pre-war population of 300,000.
The fighting largely took place in the southern Hasakeh, where ISIS seized two neighborhoods on Thursday.
The UN estimated that “90,000 people have been displaced, many pre-emptively, to the eastern and northern neighborhoods of the city… as well as to nearby villages”.
It said another 30,000 people had fled further north and northeast to other cities and towns in Hasakeh province.
The Observatory said government reinforcements from further south in Deir Ezzor, including Republican Guard units, had arrived.
Kurdish units, who share control of the city with government forces, joined the fighting late on Friday and banned civilians from the streets.
ISIS also tried to seize Hasakeh last month, but was pushed back by government forces.
On Friday, Information Minister Omran Zohbi called on “anyone who is capable of carrying a gun” to join the fight against ISIS in Hasakeh.
“Protecting the city of Hasakeh from the terrorist takfiri (extremist Sunni) attacks is a duty shared among all the sons of the city,” Zohbi said.
In the southern city of Daraa, fighting continued between government forces and rebel groups including Syrian Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front.
Since Thursday, 60 rebels, 18 government loyalists and 11 civilians have been killed in the fighting.