Syrians Slowly Returning to Kobani After Kurdish Forces Successfully Oust Islamic State from Border Town
“Thousands of people who fled the Syrian town of Kobani during a four-month battle between Kurdish and Islamic State forces are now making their way home, only to find wrecked houses and unexploded bombs littering the streets,” Reuters reports.
Almost the entire population of Kobani, 200,000 people, were forced to flee across the border to Turkey when the Islamic State tried to overrun the border town. The Kurds, assisted by U.S.-led strikes and Iraqi Peshmerga forces, were able to oust the militant group from the town in late January.
The Kurdish forces have since regained control of at least 163 villages around the town, “but their progress had been slowed by renewed clashes to the west and southwest of the town,” according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Returning residents of Kobani are now looking to go back to the largely destroyed town and many of them have gathered near the Mursitpinar border crossing, awaiting security checks before they can go back home. However, Kobani official Idris Nassan told Reuters by phone that the conditions were still not safe for their return, citing the death of 15 people in an accident involving unexploded ordnances.
Despite the warning, many residents of Kobani have opted to return, having spent over four months in Turkish refugee camps, with friends, or in cities across Turkey.
“Turkey’s largest refugee camp, built for escapees from Kobani, holds less than one-third of its 35,000 capacity, according to Dogan Eskinat, spokesman for Turkey’s disaster management agency AFAD. “Turkey keeps track of exits as well as entries. The latest figure shows around 4,000 people have gone back to Kobani,” Eskinat told Reuters.
Islamic State Fighters Kidnap Christians in Northeastern Syria
Fighters of the Islamic State have kidnapped at least 90 Assyrian Christians in northeast Syria, Newsweek reports.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claims the abductions took place Tuesday after dawn raids in which ISIS seized villages inhabited by the ancient Christian minority near the town of Tel Hmar, a mainly Assyrian town, from Kurdish forces in the province of Hassakeh.
ISIS “demanded a prisoner exchange with Kurdish fighters; they are seeking the release of ISIS members in exchange for the villagers. The exact number of prisoners ISIS is looking to swap for is not known,” according to Newsweek.
Hassakeh province, located in the northeastern corner of Syria, is of significant importance to the fight against the Islamic State because it borders areas controlled by the militant group in Iraq.
“The latest offensive coincides with a push by Syrian Kurds in northeastern Syria near the Iraqi border since Sunday that had compounded losses for the militant group in Syria,” Reuters reports. This week Syrian Kurdish forces, backed by U.S.-led airstrikes, advanced towards ISIS’s stronghold in northeastern Syria, launching two separate attacks near the Iraqi border and advancing within three miles of Tel Hamis, an ISIS-controlled town near the city of Qamishli.
U.S. Coalition Strikes Against Islamic State Kill Over 1,600 People
U.S. coalition strikes against the Islamic State have killed over 1,600 people, mostly jihadists, since strikes began last September, AFP reports.
Almost all of those killed, 1,465 people, were jihadists belonging to the Islamic State and al-Qaida’s Syrian affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, and most of them were not Syrian, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports.
Since the U.S. and a coalition of Arab countries began strikes against the Islamic State on September 23 last year, activists and civilians have raised concerns about civilian casualties as a result of the strikes – particularly because ISIS has entrenched itself in residential areas.
In September, Bassam al-Ahmad, director of the Center for Documentation of Violation, said that the international community must not turn a blind eye to the potential for increased violence against civilians as the world’s attention is on the U.S. strikes.
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