The Syrian Observatory For Human Rights

Islamic State massacre leaves more than 200 dead in Kobani

BEIRUT — Islamic State fighters who launched a surprise attack on a Syrian border town massacred more than 200 civilians, including women and children, before they were killed and driven out by Kurdish forces, activists said Saturday.

Kurdish activist Mustafa Bali, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and Kurdish official Idris Naasan put the number at 40 to 50 of elite Islamic State fighters killed in the two days of fighting since the militants sneaked into the Aleppo province town of Kobani before dawn on Thursday.

Clashes, however, continued to the south and west of the predominantly Kurdish town on the Turkish border on Saturday, they said, although the fighting in the south quieted down by nightfall.

Naasan said 23 of the city’s Kurdish defenders were killed in the fighting, but the Observatory put the number at 16. The discrepancy could not immediately be reconciled, but conflicting casualty figures are common in the aftermath of major fighting.

‘‘Kobani has been completely cleared of Daesh, and Kurdish forces are now combing the town looking for fighters who may have gone into hiding,’’ Bali, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State, said by telephone from Kobani. The official Syrian news agency, SANA, also reported that Kobani has been cleared of Islamic State fighters.

The more than 200 civilians killed in the last two days include some who perished in Islamic State suicide bombings, including one at the border crossing with Turkey, but they were mostly shot to death in cold blood, some in their own homes, the activists said.

‘‘They were revenge killings,’’ said Rami Abdurrahman, the observatory’s director.

Others were caught in the crossfire as gun battles raged in the town’s streets or were randomly targeted by Islamic State snipers on rooftops.

Bali, Abdurrahman, and Naasan all said the number of Kobani civilians and Islamic State fighters killed was likely to rise as rescue teams continue to search neighborhoods where the fighting took place.

Massacring civilians is not an uncommon practice by the Islamic State, which has slaughtered thousands in Syria and neighboring Iraq over the last year, when its fighters blitzed through large swathes of territory and declared a caliphate that spans both nations.

The Islamic State often posts on social networks gruesome images of its fighters executing captives as part of psychological warfare tactics designed to intimidate and inspire desertions among their enemies.

Last week, it posted one of its most gruesome video clips, showing the execution of 16 men it claimed to have been spies. Five of the men were drowned in a cage, four were burned inside a car, and seven were blown up by explosives.

The killing of so many civilians in Kobani, according to Abdurrahman, was premeditated and meant by the Islamic State to avenge their recent defeats at the hands of Kurdish forces.

The Western-backed Kurdish forces have emerged as a formidable foe of the extremist group, rolling them back in the north and northeast parts of Syria, where the Kurds are the dominant community, as well as in northern Iraq, where they have also made significant gains against the Islamic State.

Kobani has become a symbol of Kurdish resistance after it endured a months-long siege by the Islamic State.

 

 

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