| ABC News | - |
Kurdish
fighters captured more than a dozen villages from militants of the
Islamic State group in heavy fighting across northeastern Syria, an activist group and a Kurdish official said Monday. The fighting in the mainly-Kurdish Hassakeh province came ...
Kurdish Fighters Advance Against Jihadis in Syria
Kurdish fighters captured more than a dozen villages from militants of
the Islamic State group in heavy fighting across northeastern Syria, an
activist group and a Kurdish official said Monday.
The fighting in the mainly-Kurdish Hassakeh province came as diplomats
at a Paris conference tried to agree on a global strategy to fight the
extremist group, which has captured large tracts of territory in Iraq
and Syria.
Kurdish fighters have been repelling the advances of the Islamic State
militants for more than a year in northern Syria. The battle-hardened
Kurdish force, known by its acronym YPK, has been the most successful at
fighting the Islamic State group, which has routed Iraqi and Syrian
armed forces.
As Syria's fractured rebels have fought a two-front war against
President Bashar Assad's forces and the Islamic State group, Kurdish
forces seeking greater autonomy have defended their region against the
extremist group, occasionally partnering with rebels to beat back the
Islamic militants.
After ignoring the spread of the Islamic State, the Syrian military has
recently gone on the offensive against the extremist group, which has
seized at least three army bases and killed hundreds of soldiers.
YPK fighters have captured some 14 villages around the northeastern area
of Tal Hamis since the latest round of fighting with the Islamic State
group began Saturday, according to the Rami Abdurrahman of the
Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Nawaf Khalil, a
spokesman for Syria's powerful Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD,
whose members dominate the fighting group.
"We will fight them with all that we have," Khalil told The Associated
Press by telephone. "Those (Islamic State) can only be deterred by
force."
President Barack Obama announced last week that the United States will
ramp up airstrikes and try to build an international coalition to
degrade and eventually destroy the Islamic State group. U.S. Secretary
of State John Kerry visited several Arab states, including Egypt and
Saudi Arabia, in recent days in order to build a coalition aimed at
beating back the extremist group.
Spokesman Khalil said the Kurdish fighters were "ready to join any political coalition to strike this terrorist group."
"We are fighting, on behalf of the world, the terrorism of Daesh," he said, using an Arabic name to refer to the group.
But the Kurdish fighting group is viewed with suspicion by the
Western-backed Syrian National Coalition, which says the PYD is linked
to Assad's government. Turkey is also wary of the group, which it
believes is affiliated to the Kurdish PKK movement, which waged a long
and bloody insurgency in Turkey's southeast.
In addition to losing the villages, the Islamic State group suffered
another blow in the eastern city of Deir el-Zour, where the only bridge
linking parts of the city held by militants with its suburbs was blown
up. Abdurrahman said Islamic State fighters would now have to bring in
supplies by boat.
Syria's state-run television said government forces were responsible for
blowing up the al-Siyasiyeh Bridge over the Euphrates river.
In the Golan Heights along the disputed frontier between Israel and
Syria, U.N. peacekeepers withdrew from at least one base, said an
activist in the area who uses the name Luay.
The withdrawal came after Syrian rebels, including the
al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front, advanced across the Syrian-controlled
part of the territory and briefly seized dozens of U.N. peacekeepers.
They were later released unharmed. The activist Luay said peacekeepers
withdrew from two bases earlier this month, but were spotted leaving yet
another this week, near a town known as Khan Arnabeh.
An Israeli army spokesman said U.N. peacekeepers crossed into Israel,
but would not provide further details. He spoke on condition of
anonymity in keeping with military guidelines.
In the northern city of Aleppo, at least 11 people were killed in
government airstrikes on the rebel-held neighborhood of Marjeh,
according to the Britain-based Observatory -- which relies on a network
of activists inside Syria -- and Aleppo-based activist Mohammed Wissam.
Another 15 people were killed in the central opposition-held town of
Talbiseh after Syrian military helicopters dropped crude bombs,
according to the Observatory and a nearby activist, Tariq Badrakhan.
———————
Associated Press writers Diaa Hadid in Beirut and Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
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