Beirut: Kurdish forces engaged in sporadic battles with Daesh militants around the Syrian town of Kobani on Saturday, seeking to expand their control in the area, a monitor said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Kurdish fighters from the People’s Protection Units (YPG) had seized a village on Saturday as they battle to expel Daesh from the region.
YPG fighters now control 17 of the hundreds of villages, some no more than a few houses, in the Kobani area.
Most of those recaptured have been taken since the key town on the border with Turkey was taken by Kurdish fighters on January 26.
While Daesh has been expelled from Kobani, its forces remain scattered throughout the countryside around the town to the southeast and southwest.
In a statement released late Friday, the YPG said it had managed to “liberate several regions” in the west of Kobani.
It said it also seized several military vehicles and captured a car bomb and weapons and ammunition from Daesh forces.
The recapture of Kobani was a major blow against Daesh, which began advancing on the town on September 16 in a bid to secure its control over a long stretch of the Syrian-Turkish border.
At one point it looked poised to overrun the town, but Kurdish forces, backed by repeated US-led air strikes, reclaimed Kobani on January 26.
In a video posted on the Internet, Daesh-linked media said the militants had withdrawn from Kobani because of the air strikes but vowed to return, the SITE monitoring group reported.
Some 200,000 people fled into Turkey from the Kobani region because of the fighting, with most unable to return for now because of the destruction caused during the violence.
