A Turkish Kurd watches over the Syrian town of Kobane as she phones her relatives near Mursitpinar border crossing in the southeastern Turkish town of Suruc in Sanliurfa province, Turkey. — Reuters BEIRUT — The Daesh (the so-called IS) militants 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, activists said on Saturday. Kurdish activist Mustafa Bali, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Kurdish official Idris Naasan put at 40-50 the number of Daesh fighters killed in the two days of fighting since the militants sneaked into the town of Kobane before dawn on Thursday. Clashes, however, continued to the south and west of the predominantly Kurdish town on the Turkish border on Saturday, they said, although the fighting in the south quietened down by nightfall. Naasan said 23 of the city's Kurdish defenders were killed in the fighting, but the 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 told The Associated Press by telephone from Kobane. The official Syrian news agency, SANA, also reported that Kobane has been cleared of the Daesh fighters. The more than 200 civilians killed in the last two days include some who perished in Daesh suicide bombings, including one at the border crossing with Turkey, but they were mostly shot dead in cold blood, some in their own homes, the activists said. “They were revenge killings,” Rami Abdurrahman, the observatory's director, told the AP. Others were caught in the cross-fire as gun battles raged in the town's streets or were randomly targeted by Daesh snipers on rooftops. Bali, Abdurrahman and Naasan all said the number of Kobane civilians and the Daesh fighters killed was likely to rise as rescue teams continue to search neighborhoods where the fighting took place. Massacring civilians is not an uncommon practice by the Daesh group, whose men have slaughtered thousands in Syria and neighboring Iraq over the last year, when its fighters blitzed through large swathes of territory and declared a caliphate that spans both nations. The Daesh group often posts on social media networks gruesome images of its fighters executing captives as part of psychological warfare tactics designed 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 to have been 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, according to Abdurrahman, was premeditated and meant by Daesh to avenge their recent defeats at the hands of Kurdish forces. 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 Daesh. Kobane has become a symbol of Kurdish resistance after it endured a months-long siege by the Daesh group before Kurdish forces, backed by US-led coalition airstrikes, broke through and drove the militants out in January. Thursday's surprise attack on the town and a simultaneous one targeting the remote northeastern town of Hasaka came two days after the Daesh group called for a wave of violence during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, a time of fasting and piety that is now in its second week. In what also appears to be a response to that call, terror attacks took place Friday across three continents: shootings in a Tunisian beach resort that left 39 people dead, an explosion and a beheading in a US-owned chemical warehouse in southeast France and a suicide bombing by a Daesh affiliate at a Shiite mosque in Kuwait that killed at least 27 worshippers. The attacks also came after the group suffered a series of setbacks over the past two weeks, including the loss earlier this week of the Syrian border town of Tal Abyad — one of the group's main points for bringing in foreign fighters and supplies. Fighting is continuing in Hasaka for the third successive day, with government and Kurdish forces separately fighting the Daesh militants who have seized several neighborhoods in the mostly Kurdish town, according to the Observatory. — AP
