Kurds oust ISIS from Syria’s Kobani as civilian toll mounts

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.