WarSclerotic

ISIL re-enters Syrian Kurdish town Kobane

At least 12 killed in bomb blast in battleground border town, as fighting flares in several other key Syrian cities.

25 Jun 2015 11:35 GMT

via ISIL re-enters Syrian Kurdish town Kobane – Al Jazeera English.

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters have launched attacks on two fronts in northern Syria, re-entering the Kurdish town of Kobane and seizing parts of the city of Hasakah.

Dozens of ISIL fighters attacked Kobane on the border with Turkey, where at least 12 people were killed in a car bomb attack at the start of the offensive on Thursday morning.

ISIL fighters were wearing Kurdish and Free Syrian Army uniforms, the sources told Al Jazeera, as they attacked from three sides and took several positions inside the battleground town.

Al Jazeera’s Nisreen El Shamayleh, reporting from Amman, said several ISIL fighters “carried out suicide attacks; decimated themselves and caused a lot of casualties” after entering the city.

“There’s a lot of fighting going on there, that we understand is ongoing,” our correspondent said.

“Dozens of people have been trying to flee.”

The Kurdish group YPG asked civilians to stay home as it sent reinforcements to the town.

The fighting prompted Kurdish activists and Syrian state television to accuse Turkey of allowing ISIL to attack Kobane from its side of the border.

A Turkish foreign ministry spokesman later “strongly denied” that the ISIL fighters crossed into Syria from Turkey.

Kurdish forces in January had reclaimed Kobane from ISIL in a victory touted by Anwar Muslim, the prime minister of the self-declared Kurdish canton of Kobane, as “the beginning of the end for Daesh [ISIL]”.

Losing Kobane after more than four months of intense fighting was seen as a significant propaganda blow to ISIL after it had invested extensive military resources to capture the isolated border town.

“Daesh [ISIL] took most of the places it wanted in Syria and Iraq but could not capture Kobane,” Muslim told Al Jazeera at the time.

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