Kurdish Forces Secure Syria's Kobani After Islamic State Attack

Beirut: Kurdish fighters said they have fully secured the Syrian border town of Kobani and killed more than 60 Islamic State militants, two days after the hardline group attacked it with suicide bombers.

Redur Xelil, spokesman for the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia said around eight members of Islamic State had also escaped north towards the Turkish border after the Kurds pushed back.

"There are still search operations in neighbourhoods where they might be hiding. The town is quiet now," he said in an online message.

In Syria's northeast, Kurdish forces and the army fought separate battles with Islamic State around Hasaka city overnight as the hardline group tried to capture more areas of the major urban centre near the Iraqi border, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said today

In Kobani, the YPG blew up a school building used by Islamic State earlier today, the Observatory said, and plumes of smoke could be seen rising into the air from the Turkish side of the border.

Islamic State killed around 200 civilians in the town and surrounding areas in the attack which started on Thursday, the Observatory said, describing it as one of the worst massacres committed by the group in Syria.

Kobani was the site of one of the biggest battles against Islamic State last year. The Kurdish YPG force drove the militants back from the town with the help of U.S. air strikes, after four months of fighting and siege.

The YPG previously described the latest attack on Kobani as 'a suicide mission' rather than an attempt to capture the town.

In the northeast, Islamic State does seem to be attempting to wrest Hasaka city from government control. Syrian state television has said "The city was safe and under control", but the Observatory said fierce clashes continued in the southwest, south and southeast.

Hasaka is important to all sides fighting in an area that sits between Islamic State-held territory in Syria and Iraq and which reaches north up to the Turkish border.

The assault there will test the Syrian army's capacity to hold on to areas far from the major government-held cities in the west. The YPG's Xelil said the government forces appeared to be holding on to their positions by earlier today.

Islamic State launched an assault on government-held areas of Hasaka early on Thursday and the United Nations says the violence is estimated to have displaced up to 120,000 people.

Islamic State said in statements today, it attacked areas east of the city and in a video posted online claimed to have entered western areas. State television quoted the head of the police in Hasaka as saying its special forces had 'eliminated Daesh terrorists' in the city, using an Arabic acronym for the group.

Hasaka is divided into areas run separately by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government and Kurdish authorities and has a mixed population of Arabs, Kurds and Christians.

Islamic State has been back on the offensive after two weeks of defeats at the hands of Kurdish-led forces, supported by U.S.-led air strikes. This week the Kurds advanced to within 50 km (30 miles) of Raqqa city, the group's de facto capital.

Late on Friday Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi appealed to residents to take up arms to defend Hasaka.

"I call on every man, every young woman and every young man able to carry weapons to move immediately and join the frontline positions to defend the city," he said on state television.

While Islamic State had managed to advance slightly in Hasaka on Friday, seizing one army position, heavy Syrian air force strikes hindered the attack, according to the Observatory.

The U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, citing government figures, said that since the attack on Hasaka started 120,000 people were estimated to have been displaced within the city and to surrounding villages, as well as to the northern districts of the province.