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Extremists from the Islamic State (IS) have captured several villages around the city of Ain al-Arab thanks to heavy weaponry, as they closed in on the third largest Syrian town, the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights said on Thursday.
“IS fighters have seized at least 21 villages around Kobane”, the Observatory’s director Rami Abdel Rahman said, referring to the town by its Kurdish name.
“The IS is using heavy weaponry, its artillery and tanks”, he added, saying that over thousands of Kurdish fighters protecting the town were being encircled in “a pincer movement”.
Kobane is the third largest town in Syria, after the towns of Qamishli and Afrin. The town’s capture will allow the extremists to control am extended stretch of the Turkish-Syrian border.
Activist Jan Ali, speaking from Kobane with a pseudonym, told AFP that apart from the villages which the extremists had captured, other villages were also abandoned by people afraid of the IS advance.
“If the situation doesn’t change, it is very possible that (the IS) will enter the city. We are seeing the signs of a humanitarian crisis in Kobane”, he said, before adding that the IS cut electricity and water supplies to Kobane.
He added that Turkish authorities were blocking the only passage out of Syria to Turkey.
“People from the villages have fled to the city… Some are trying to cross into Turkey but the Turkish authorities are not allowing them”, he said.
Meanwhile, the Syrian opposition National Coalition warned of “the danger of a massacre of civilians” in the Kurdish regions.
According to Abdel Rahman, the current IS offensive was much greater than the July assault that was repelled by Kurdish forces supported by Turkish Kurdish fighters.
Elsewhere, at least 17 people were killed in air strikes conducted by the Syrian regime on the town Al-Bab in the province of Aleppo, the Observatory added. Though the town is now under the control of the IS, everyone killed was a civilian, Abdel Rahman said.
