YEREVAN, JUNE 25, ARMENPRESS. Islamic State militants flying the Free Syrian Army flag and disguised in FSA uniforms have reportedly killed dozens of people in and around the Syrian border town of Kobani after launching an attack under the cover of darkness. As Armenpress informs citing “The Guardian,” the militants drove five vehicles into the town in the early hours of Thursday and used a suicide bomber to blow up a border crossing with Turkey. A civilian inside Kobani said: “No one can go out of their home, the streets are not safe … Isis fighters are getting inside houses and killing everyone [they find].”

At least 20 Syrian Kurds, among them women and children, were shot dead in a nearby village, monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Around the same time as the Kobani attack, the group launched an assault on the north-eastern city of Hasakah, aided by militias previously aligned with the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. Western districts were seized and the Syrian army pushed into the city centre. The surprise, two-pronged offensive came as Isis reels from several high-profile defeats near Raqqa, the capital of its self-declared caliphate and its seat of power in Syria.

The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia and an alliance of rebels known as the “Euphrates Volcano” – backed US-led coalition air strikes – have seized swaths of territory from Isis,including the strategic border town of Tal Abyad. In recent days they also wrested control of Brigade 93, a strategic base seized by Isis from the Syrian regime, and the town of Ain Issa, bringing them within 30 miles of Raqqa itself. “Islamic State’s morale has collapsed after the advance in the Raqqa countryside,” said Redur Xelil, the YPG spokesman who provided the accounts of the latest Isis offensive. “They are trying to raise the morale of their fighters and supporters, and show that they still have strength and can strike out elsewhere.”

He also said that another goal of the Isis offensive may be to draw Kurdish troops away from the frontline to defend other territories. Xelil said the militants who entered Kobani numbered between 30 and 40, and were holed up in buildings in the city after killing dozens of people. The YPG, backed by the Kurdish Asayish security forces, were combing the area and he was confident they would defeat the militants. Clashes were continuing on Thursday morning. “We will destroy this group that entered the city,” he said.