The Kurdish-held city of Kobani in northern Syria was back in ISIS’ crosshairs on Thursday, as its militants launched attacks including two car bomb blasts near the Syrian-Turkish border, according to a monitoring group.
Clashes continued in the town between ISIS militants and the Kurdish YPG militia, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based monitoring group, with dozens of people reported killed and injured.
The group, citing its own sources, said the ISIS fighters sneaked into Kobani by disguising themselves in Kurdish uniforms.
The shattered city was wrested from ISIS’ control by Kurdish YPG forces early this year after months of bitter fighting.
ISIS fighters also attacked Syrian regime forces Thursday in the northeastern city of al-Hasakah, about 270 kilometers (170 miles) east of Kobani, the SOHR said.
Heavy clashes are underway there and the Syrian air force is conducting airstrikes in the area, the monitoring group said. ISIS militants detonated at least one car bomb at a Syrian military checkpoint and have taken control of some neighborhoods in the southern part of the city, according to the group.
The SOHR reported at least 30 killed among regime forces and 20 dead from ISIS’ ranks. CNN cannot independently confirm the casualty numbers.
These ISIS offensives come in the wake of recent losses by the terrorist group in the Syrian cities of Ain Issa and Tal Abyad in the ISIS stronghold province of Raqqa, where Kurdish forces, backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, were able to beat back the militants.
Activists and a Kurdish official told CNN on Wednesday that ISIS was reportedly digging trenches and calling on reinforcements to prepare for a possible assault by Kurdish forces on the city of Raqqa, the group’s de facto capital in Syria.
ISIS moved a convoy of nearly 100 military vehicles packed with arms, ammunition and fighters from the countryside east of Raqqa to one of the terror group’s bases within the city, said Rami Abdelrahman, the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Reports of the apparent fortification of Raqqa came just a day after Kurdish YPG forces backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes wrested control of the town of Ain Issa from ISIS, the SOHR reported.
That tactical victory put ISIS’ formidable rivals just 55 kilometers (about 34 miles) away from the city of Raqqa.
Analyst Charles Lister of the Brookings Doha Center said via Twitter that the latest ISIS offensive appeared to be “classic” ISIS strategy — a three-pronged assault on Kobani and attack on al-Hasakah to divert the Kurds from Raqqa.
Lister added that reports ISIS fighters disguised themselves to gain entry to Kobani were an “important signal of intent: not just to divert but instill paranoia.”
Strategically, Kobani is very valuable. It sits on the border with Turkey and its seizure would give ISIS a complete swath of land between Raqqa and Turkey.
ISIS took the city of Kobani last fall after a brutal back-and-forth battle but finally abandoned it in January in the face of a Kurdish offensive backed by an extensive campaign of airstrikes by the U.S.-led international coalition.