Kurdish forces have regained control of at least 163 villages around the Syrian town of Kobane after driving back Islamic State militants in the past three weeks, a group monitoring the conflict said on Saturday.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that although the Kurds had recaptured many villages since winning back Kobane in late January, their progress had been slowed by renewed clashes to the west and southwest of the town, where IS had redirected its fighters, Reuters said in a report.
The battle for the predominately Kurdish town, known as Ayn al-Arab in Arabic, became a focal point for the US-led air campaign against the al-Qaeda offshoot in Syria.
IS controls large areas of northern and eastern Syria, including a strip of territory across the northern Aleppo countryside and a corridor stretching southeast from Raqqa Province to the frontier with Iraq.
The Syrian Kurds, who also received military support from Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces, said they drove IS from the town near the Turkish border on January 26.
The Kurds were joined by several hundred fighters in the battles for areas surrounding the town, the Observatory’s founder Rami Abdulrahman said.
IS advanced on Kobane last year with heavy weapons and drove tens of thousands of residents over the border into Turkey. The Kurds, armed with mainly light weapons, called for international help and the town now lies in ruins.
