Kurds push back ISIS around Ain al-Arab

Kurdish militia backed by U.S.-led airstrikes are making rapid advances against ISIS forces in rural areas around Ain al-Arab after driving the group from the Syrian border town last week, the Kurdish militia and an activist group said Monday, as government warplanes killed at least 40 people across the country, The Daily Star reported.

A spokesman for the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia said ISIS forces were collapsing around Ain al-Arab, also known in Kurdish as Kobani. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist anti-regime organization, said ISIS fighters were putting up little resistance in the face of the Kurdish advance and may be pushed back even further.

“The fighting organization of Daesh ... is in a state of complete collapse at present and cannot hold ground,” Redur Xelil, spokesman for the YPG, told Reuters by telephone, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.

The Syrian Kurds, who also received military support from Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces, drove ISIS from the town last week.

Although the town has little strategic value, the battle for Ain al-Arab marked the first example of direct U.S. support for ground forces fighting ISIS in Syria.

As part of its strategy to roll back ISIS in Syria, the United States is also planning to train and equip nonjihadi rebels, who account for only a modest part of the fighters battling President Bashar Assad.

Maj. Gen. Salim Idriss, defense minister in the opposition-in-exile interim government, announced Monday preparations for a national army, which is set to consist of 60,000 fighters. “The structure of this army will include all the corps and formations of the Syrian revolution.” The YPG says it has 50,000 fighters deployed in three predominantly Kurdish areas of northern Syria. It has said it is willing to be a partner in the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS.

Rami Abdel-Rahman, who runs the Observatory, said Ain al-Arab fighters who were some 4 to 5 km from the town Sunday, were now at least 10 km away. “There is no large-scale resistance.”