Kurdish Fighters Make Gains Against ISIS in Syria

The AP reports that Kurdish fighters, arguably the best-equipped group to fight ISIS on the ground, have “captured more than a dozen villages from [ISIS] militants in heavy fighting across northeastern Syria.”

The fighting was in the majority-Kurdish Hassakeh province.

“Kurdish fighters have been repelling the advances of the Islamic State militants for more than a year in northern Syria,” the wire writes. “The battle-hardened Kurdish force has been the most successful at fighting the Islamic State group in both Iraq and Syria.”

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that the Syrian army, which is ramping up its own efforts against the militant group, has destroyed an ISIS-controlled bridge over the Euphrates in Deir Ezzor, a blow to the group’s ability to control supply lines near Iraq.

Raqqa Gripped by Fear of Airstrikes on ISIS

Martin Chulov of the Guardian reports that “the city where the Western hostages slain by the [ISIS] terror group were held is nervously preparing for an onslaught. Each night since Barack Obama said he would bomb ISIS targets in Syria, residents of the eastern city of Raqqa – those who support the group and those who abhor it – have sat in fear waiting for the airstrikes to begin.

“Many believe that the city’s civilians will pay the price of a campaign to root out ISIS, which after controlling Raqqa for more than a year is now well embedded in its ramshackle neighborhoods and entwined into much of its social fabric. ISIS has run Raqqa with impunity since it ousted the Syrian regime in mid-2013, fearing no foe and ruthlessly imposing its worldview on a population that has been unwilling to confront them.”

ISIS Draws a Steady Stream of Recruits from Turkey

The New York Times reports that ISIS continues to draw a steady number of its recruits from neighboring Turkey.

“Having spent most of his youth as a drug addict in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Turkey’s capital, Can did not think he had much to lose when he was smuggled into Syria with 10 of his childhood friends to join the world’s most extreme jihadist group,” it writes.

“After 15 days at a training camp in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the de facto headquarters of the group, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the 27-year-old Can was assigned to a fighting unit. He said he shot two men and participated in a public execution. It was only after he buried a man alive that he was told he had become a full ISIS fighter.”