Islamic State fighters yesterday launched simultaneous attacks against Syrian government and Kurdish militia forces, moving back on to the offensive after losing ground in recent days to Kurdish-led forces near the capital of their ‘caliphate’.
Islamic State sought to retake the initiative with incursions into the Kurdish-held town of Kobani at the Turkish border and government-held areas of Hasaka city in the northeast.
In a separate offensive in the multi-sided Syrian civil war, an alliance of rebels in the south of the country also launched an attack with the aim of driving government forces from the city of Deraa.
The attacks by Islamic State follow a rapid advance by Kurdish-led forces deep into the hardline group’s territory, to within 50 km of its de facto capital Raqqa.
They opened fire randomly on everyone they found
The dual assaults on government forces in Hasaka and Deraa, both provincial capitals, are a test of Assad’s resolve to hold out in remote outposts beyond the western part of the country that is seen as the top priority for his survival.
The US and European and Arab allies have been bombing Islamic State since last year to try to defeat a group that a year ago proclaimed a caliphate to rule over all Muslims from territory in Syria and Iraq. Islamic State advanced rapidly last month, seizing cities in Syria and Iraq. The latest Kurdish advance in Syria has shifted the momentum again, but Islamic State fighters have often adopted a tactic of advancing elsewhere when they lose ground.
The group said it had seized al-Nashwa district and neighbouring areas in the southwest of Hasaka, a city divided into zones of government and Kurdish control. Government forces had withdrawn towards the city centre, it said in a statement.
Syrian state TV said Islamic State was expelling residents from their homes in al-Nashwa, executing people and detaining them. It also said a car bomb had exploded in the southeast of Hasaka.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Islamic State had seized two districts from government control.
Government-held parts of Hasaka are one of President Bashar al-Assad’s last footholds in the northeast region bordering Iraq and Turkey, territory mainly run by Kurds since Syria’s conflict erupted in 2011.
The Islamic State attack on Kobani began with at least one car bomb in an area near the border crossing with Turkey, Kurdish officials and the Observatory said. Islamic State fighters were battling Kurdish forces in the town itself.
Kobani was the site of one of the biggest battles against Islamic State last year. The Kurdish forces, known as the YPG, drove the Islamic militants back from Kobani with the help of US air strikes, after four months of fighting and siege.
YPG spokesman Redur Xelil said yesterday’s attackers had entered the town from the west in five cars, flying the flag of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army movement, which has fought alongside the YPG against Islamic State.
“They opened fire randomly on everyone they found,” he said.
The Observatory said the attackers also wore YPG uniforms. It added that at least 35 people, most of them civilians, were killed in the attacks, as well as 20 or more Kurdish civilians in a village south of Kobani.