BEIRUT // ISIL launched a two-pronged attack in northern Syria on Thursday, re-entering the Kurdish stronghold of Kobani and seizing parts of the city of Hassakeh following several setbacks.
In southern Syria, an alliance of rebel groups, including Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Al Nusra, also attacked government-held areas of the city of Deraa in another potentially serious blow to the regime.
Analysts said the surprise ISIL assaults were aimed at diverting Kurdish forces after they scored a series of victories and advanced on the militants’ Syrian stronghold of Raqqa.
Kobani, on the border with Turkey, became an important symbol in the battle against ISIL after the group launched a bid to take it last year.
Kurdish forces backed by US-led airstrikes waged a four-month battle to repel the group, finally securing the town in January.
But on Thursday, ISIL extremists returned, detonating a suicide car bomb near the border crossing adjacent to Kobani as they launched an assault.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said at least 35 civilians and Kurdish fighters were killed in the car bomb and subsequent fighting in the centre of the town, along with eight ISIL militants.
A few hours later, two more car bombs detonated near the border, but there were no immediate details on casualties.
In a statement posted on extremist forums, ISIL said its fighters exploded “several” suicide bombs around Kobani, and “carried out multi-pronged attacks on several fronts” in the surrounding countryside.
ISIL forces also entered the Kurdish village of Barkh Butan, some 20 kilometres south of Kobani on Thursday morning, executing at least 23 residents, among them women and children, the Observatory said.
The extremists withdrew from the village after US-led coalition strikes on the outskirts of the village and the arrival of Kurdish forces, the monitor said.
The ISIL assault on Kobani prompted angry Kurdish accusations that Turkey had allowed the militants to enter Syria from its territory, a claim Turkish officials dismissed as “baseless”.
“The claim that Daesh militants passed through the Turkish border is entirely a lie and part of a black propoganda,” Turkey’s deputy prime minister Numan Kurtulmus said on Twitter.
Since being pushed out of Kobani in January, ISIL has suffered a string of defeats at the hands of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and their Arab rebel allies.
On June 16, the YPG seized the border town of Tal Abyad, a key transit point for ISIL, and then drove south towards Raqqa, the militant group’s de facto Syrian capital.
As the Kobani attack began on Thursday, ISIL forces also entered the northeastern city of Hassakeh.
Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Centre think tank, said the dual assault was a diversionary tactic after Kurdish forces advanced to within 55 kilometres of Raqqa this week.
"Events overnight in Kobani and Hassakeh have displayed classic ISIL strategy, whereby unexpected, spectacular attacks have been launched as diversionary operations aimed at distracting the Kurds from their role approaching Raqqa," said Mr Lister, author of The Syrian Jihad, a book on ISIL.
By Thursday morning, ISIL fighters controlled two neighbourhoods in southern Hassakeh, capital of a Kurdish-majority province in the north-east, the Observatory said.
At least 30 government loyalists and 20 extremists were killed in the fighting, and civilian residents were fleeing to the north of the city, the monitor added.
Control of Hassakeh is divided between government loyalists and Kurdish militia who are mostly present in the city’s north and north-west.
ISIL has sought repeatedly to enter the city, including earlier this month when it advanced to the southern outskirts before government forces pushed it back.
On Tuesday night, two ISIL suicide bombers killed 10 Syrian soldiers in the city.
State television acknowledged “heavy clashes ongoing between Syrian army troops and National Defence Forces against ISIL terrorists in the Al Nashwa district of Hassakeh.”
In southern Syria, government troops came under attack in Deraa, another provincial capital.
An alliance of rebel groups including Al Nusra attacked government-held parts of the city, the Observatory said.
A military source in Damascus said “the fighting between the two sides in Deraa city that began overnight is continuing. State television said at least six people had been killed in rebel mortar and makeshift rocket fire on the city.
Across the border in Jordan, one person was killed and four wounded when a stray rocket hit a city around 10km south of Deraa, a government source said.
More than 230,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began with anti-government demonstrations in March 2011.
* Agence France-Presse