ISIS militants continued to target civilians in the Syrian town of Kobani on Friday, a day after what activists called the “second largest massacre” since the militant group declared an Islamic caliphate a year ago across parts of Syria and Iraq.
On Thursday, ISIS militants disguised as YPG (Kurdish security forces) infiltrated Kobani, killing at least 140 civilians and injuring more than 200 people, said the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Fighting between the YPG forces and ISIS militants continued in Kobani, according to a statement released by the YPG forces.
In the west region of the city on Friday, YPG forces stopped a small number of ISIS militants from crossing the Euphrates River by forming a blockage around the militants, preventing them from reaching the village of Shiukh, the statement said.
The rights group said the bloodiest single massacre carried out by ISIS militants was last year in the eastern countryside of Deir Ez-zor, where more than 930 people of the al- Shaitat tribe were killed.
Kobani is a strategically valuable city that sits on the border with Turkey. ISIS took the city last fall after a brutal back-and-forth battle but abandoned it in January in the face of a Kurdish offensive backed by airstrikes by the U.S.-led international coalition.
The latest ISIS offensives come in the wake of recent losses by the terror 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.
