ISIS Makes Gains Against Kurds in Syria

Reuters reports that Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants “have captured villages and besieged a Kurdish city in northern Syria near the border with Turkey in a major assault that prompted a commander to appeal for military aid from other Kurds in the region.

“In an advance near the border with Turkey, ISIS fighters using heavy weaponry including tanks seized a group of Kurdish villages near the city of Ayn al-Arab, also known as Kobani … 21 villages had fallen to ISIS fighters advancing on the city.

“We’ve lost touch with many of the residents living in the villages that ISIS seized,” Ocalan Iso, deputy head of the Kurdish forces in Kobani, told the wire.

Meanwhile, Ben Hubbard of the New York Times reports that the U.S.’s goal in Syria is to make rebel fighting groups viable ground partners for an air attack against ISIS.

“In a secret office near the Syrian border here, intelligence agents from the United States and its allies are laying the groundwork for what they hope will become an effective force of Syrian rebels to serve as ground troops in the international battle against the extremist Islamic State,” he writes.

“The office, the Military Operations Command, has slowed funding to Islamist groups, paid salaries to thousands of ‘vetted’ rebels and given them ammunition to boost their battlefield mettle.

“But even the program’s biggest beneficiaries — the rebels themselves — acknowledge that turning this relatively small group into a force that can challenge the well-funded and well-armed Islamic State is a challenge that will require tremendous support from its foreign backers.”

U.S.: Assad Broke Chemical Gas Pact

AFP reports that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad broke the terms of an international chemical weapons agreement by “unleashing” chlorine gas this year.

“We believe there is evidence of Assad’s use of chlorine, which when you use it, despite it not being on the list, it is prohibited under the Chemical Weapons Convention,” the wire quotes Kerry as telling U.S. lawmakers. The U.S. also had “some questions about a couple of other items” that were being investigated.

AFP says that Washington “was studying ways to hold Assad to account, after the world’s chemical watchdog earlier this month confirmed the systematic use of chlorine as a weapon in war-torn Syria.”