Kurdish forces of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) repelled an attack by militant fighters of the Islamic State (ISIS) in the vicinity of Kobane, northern Syria, military sources reported on Tuesday.
“A group of ISIS terrorists tried to infiltrate in the Tishreen village southwest of Kobane, but the YPG repelled the attack and forced the militants to retreat towards their strongholds in Jarablus,” YPG spokesman Habun Osman told ARA News in Kobane.
The offensive started when an ISIS militant carried out a suicide attack near a security checkpoint for the YPG in the vicinity of Tishreen Dam, followed by an attempt by a group of some 30 ISIS militant fighters to storm YPG’s headquarters in the area.
“Subsequent to the terror attack, clashes broke out between our (YPG) fighters and ISIS terrorists in the vicinity of Tishreen Dam,” the official source reported.
At least four ISIS militants were killed in the clashes, before the rest of the militants retreated towards Jarablus city on the border with Turkey.
The radical group has been striving to regain positions in the countryside of Kobane and other areas in Aleppo province, north Syria, after losing ground to the Kurds.
On December 26, 2015, Kurdish YPG forces and allied rebels from the western-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) expelled ISIS militants from the Tishreen Dam and dozens of villages on the Euphrates River.
By losing the Tishreen Dam ISIS is considered to have lost one of its most strategic supply lines, as the dam has severed the group for more than two years to move its militants and weapons between its main bastion of Raqqa and the cities of Manbij and Jarablus in the northern countryside of Aleppo.
http://aranews.net/2016/02/kurds-repel- ... th-kobane/
