Islamic State seizes 21 Kurdish villages in major assault

Islamic State (IS) fighters have encircled a Kurdish city in northern Syria near the border with Turkey after seizing 21 villages in a major assault that prompted a commander to appeal for military aid from other Kurds in the region.

With the United States planning to expand military action against Islamic State from Iraq to Syria, a surveillance drone was spotted for the first time over nearby Islamic State-controlled territory in Aleppo province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks Syria's civil war, said.

It was not immediately clear who was operating the drone.

US president Barack Obama last week said he would not hesitate to strike the radical Islamist group that has used Syria as a base. The US is conducting air strikes against IS in Iraq and last month Obama authorised surveillance flights over Syria.

IS fighters, armed with heavy weaponry including tanks, seized a group of villages near the city of Ayn al-Arab, known as Kobani in Kurdish, in an offensive which the Observatory said had started on Tuesday night.

It said 21 villages had fallen to Islamic State in the last 24 hours as the group advanced on the city.

“We’ve lost touch with many of the residents living in the villages that ISIS (Islamic State) seized,” Ocalan Iso, deputy head of the Kurdish forces in Kobani, said.

He said the group was committing massacres and kidnapping women in the newly-seized areas, giving the names of 28 members of a single family he said had been taken captive. It was not possible to immediately verify his account.

The Kurds were appealing for military aid from other Kurdish groups in the region including the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), he said. Support from Kurds who crossed from Turkey helped to repel an IS attack on Kobani in July.

Redur Xelil, spokesman for the YPG, said IS had encircled Kobani and was using tanks, rockets and artillery in the attack. “We call on world powers to move to halt this barbaric assault by ISIS,” he said.

The YPG, which says it has 50,000 fighters, says it should be a natural partner in a coalition the United States is trying to assemble to fight Islamic State.

But the Syrian Kurds’ relationship with the West is complicated by their ties to the PKK - a group listed as a terrorist organisation in many Western states because of the militant campaign it waged for Kurdish rights in Turkey.

IS has been trying to establish control over a belt of territory near the border with Turkey, expanding out of its strongholds further east in the provinces of Raqqa and Deir al-Zor, which borders Iraq.

The group advanced westwards into northern Aleppo province in August, seizing territory from less well-armed groups that have been fighting Assad’s forces.

General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Tuesday the US was planning “a persistent and sustainable campaign” against IS in Syria, but that they were not preparing to unleash a “shock and awe” campaign of overwhelming air strikes in Syria.

Reuters