Throughout its rise to power during 2013 and its announcement of an Islamic “caliphate” straddling Iraq and Syria last summer, IS has presented itself as unstoppable.
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Despite their complaints about outmatched equipment, the Kurdish militias have seen unparalleled success in pushing ISIS back from territory seized in northern Syria.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based organization that reports on the conflict, backed YPG’s claims that Islamic State forces were surrounded in the southern parts of the city, Reuters reported.
At least 10 Kurdish fighters were killed in the blast and subsequent gun battle, along with eight IS members, including the bomber, the Observatory said.
The group also said the death toll included at least 26 IS child soldiers.
“I feel that I am out here not just fighting for the Kurds, but I am fighting for my country…”
State news agency SANA said Syria’s armed forces “dealt great blows to the Daesh (IS) terrorists…in Zuhur” Tuesday, but did not say the jihadists had been pushed out of the city.
The Kurdish foreign legion fighting ISIS in Syria has a New Yorker in its ranks – and for him it’s all about revenge for 9/11.
Kurdish forces captured Sarrin on Monday, after several weeks of intense clashes with IS.
In the northwest, Islamist rebel groups and Syria’s Al-Qaeda affiliate have begun an offensive on the edge of the coastal province of Latakia, home of the Assad clan, activists said.
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Syria’s increasingly complex civil war, which has claimed more than 210,000 lives-more than half of them civilian, is now entering its fifth year.
