in the northeast province of Hasakeh, where Kurdish militia took on the extremist group in bloody clashes on Friday night.
The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) “retook at least four checkpoints and a number of neighbourhoods” around the town of Tal Tamr, Abdel Rahman told AFP.
He said the Kurds had launched a “counter-offensive” against an IS assault on the town that began in February, adding that in the past 24 hours, seven YPG fighters and 24 IS militants were killed.
Though small, Tal Tamr has strategic value because it lies on a road that runs east across the Iraqi border to IS’s bastion in Mosul, as well as north to the Turkish border.
IS has seized over a dozen villages around Tal Tamr, said Abdel Rahman, adding that the group was attacking the town to make up for losses in other parts of Hasakeh.
The US-led coalition fighting IS in Syria and Iraq also conducted air strikes on IS positions around Tal Tamr on Friday, he added.
The coalition began targeting IS around the town last month after Kurdish forces appealed for international action, and has provided air support for the YPG elsewhere in northern Syria, including the flashpoint border town of Kobane.
In the northern city of Aleppo, at least five people were killed and dozens wounded in rocket attacks Saturday on the Christian neighbourhood of Suleimaniyah.
“The death toll will likely rise as there are a number of people in critical condition,” Abdel Rahman said.
State television reported the attack but said “terrorist shelling” had killed eight people.
Government forces regularly pound rebel-held areas from the air, and opposition fighter’s fire rockets and mortar rounds into regime-controlled neighbourhoods. More than 215,000 people have been killed in Syria’s four-year war.
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