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 or driven out by Kurdish forces, reports said on Saturday.
Kurdish activist Mustafa Bali, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Kurdish official Idris Naasan put at 40 to 50 the number of Islamic State fighters killed in the two days of fighting since the militants sneaked into the town of Kobane before dawn on Thursday.
Clashes continued to the south and west of the predominantly Kurdish town on the Turkish border on Saturday, although the fighting in the south quietened by nightfall, they said.
Photo: AP
Naasan said 23 of the city’s Kurdish defenders were killed in the fighting, but the Syrian 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.
“Kobane 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 group, told reporters by telephone from Kobane.
Syria’s SANA news agency also reported that Kobane had been cleared of Islamic State fighters.
The more than 200 civilians killed in the past two days included some who perished in suicide bombings, including one at the border crossing with Turkey, but they were mostly shot in cold blood, some in their own homes, the activists said.
“They were revenge killings,” observatory director Rami Abdurrahman told reporters.
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, he said.
Bali, Abdurrahman and Naasan all said the number of Kobane civilians and Islamic State fighters found dead was likely to rise as rescue teams continue to search neighborhoods where the fighting took place.
Targeting civilians is not an uncommon practice by the Islamic State group, whose men have killed thousands in Syria and Iraq over the past year, when the group formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant blitzed through large swathes of territory and declared a caliphate that spans both nations.
The group often posts on social media gruesome images of its fighters executing captives as part of psychological warfare tactics 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 were 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 Kobane was premeditated and meant by the Islamic State to avenge their recent defeats at the hands of Kurdish forces, Abdurrahman said.
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.
Kobane has become a symbol of Kurdish resistance after it endured a months-long siege by the Islamic State group before Kurdish forces, backed by US-led coalition airstrikes, broke through and drove the militants out in January.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat
RSS