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Monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Monday said that Kurdish fighters battling extremists from Islamic State (IS) were able to gain ground in the Syrian border town Kobane overnight. The town has become a symbolic battleground in the fight against the IS, with the global coalition launching airstrikes almost every day to aid the Kurdish fighters.
According to the Observatory, Kurdish fighters from the People’s Protection Units (YPG) advanced in the northeastern and eastern sectors of the town.
“At least 18 Islamic State militants were killed in the fighting, as well as a number of Kurdish fighters”, the Observatory’s director Rami Abdel Rahman said, adding that both sides used heavy weaponry. He also said that the town was still evenly divided between the extremists and the Kurds.
Kurdish forces, who were once at risk of being overpowered by the IS, have managed to hold on, thanks to the deployment of Iraqi Kurdish forces and US-lead airstrikes.
According to the UK-based monitor, the coalition conducted five air raids in Kobane overnight but had no immediate statistics on casualties.
On a different front, in the increasingly complex Syrian civil war, rebel forces, including al-Nusra Front, pressed their assault on a Shi’ite village in the west, which according to residents, had held out for eighteen months. Syria’s minority Shi’ite community overwhelmingly support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite-dominated regime against the pre-dominantly Sunni rebels.
The village of Zahraa, one of two neighboring Shi’ite communities, had recently come under assault from the rebels; neighboring village Nubol has been under assault since Saturday.
The monitor described the fighting as “the most violent” so far, with attackers coming in from the southeast and forcing villagers to flee to the center. According to the Observatory, at least one civilian and eight rebels were killed in the fighting.