'IS' militants killed in Kobani fighting
January 6, 2015
Dozens of "Islamic State" fighters died amid clashes with Kurdish forces on Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The US military also conducted 10 airstrikes in the area along with its coalition partners, Reuters news agency reported.
At least 31 militants died in firefights and ambushes by the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) on Tuesday in the eastern part of Kobane, known as Ayn al-Arab in Arabic, the Syrian human rights watchdog tweeted:
The town is considered strategic because of its location on Syria's border with Turkey.
Kurdish forces now occupy 80 percent of Kobani, which IS militants occupied in a siege carried out more than three months ago.
IS officer beheaded
The observatory also reported finding a decapitated IS militant, who had probably been a senior official in the IS police force. The man was an Egyptian national and known as the Deputy "Emir" of the al-Hesbah province in the north, the watchdog said in a report on its website.
The corpse was found with a cigarette in its mouth and the words,"This is evil, you sheikh," written on it. It is not clear who carried out the beheading. IS has banned smoking and drinking and has carried out floggings of offenders in the past.
The jihadist group has occupied vast expanses of land in Syria and Iraq with the aim of establishing a caliphate based on Sharia law.
mg/sgb (Reuters, AFP)