Islamic State fighters pushed back on fronts in Syria, Iraq
Kurdish fighters continue to gain ground against the self-described Islamic State in the Syrian border town of Kobane. Meanwhile, Iraqi forces have reportedly regained full control of the country's largest oil refinery.
Kurdish fighters continue to gain ground against the self-described Islamic State in the Syrian border town of Kobane. Meanwhile, Iraqi forces have reportedly regained full control of the country's largest oil refinery.
Forces of the self-declared Islamic State appeared Tuesday to have suffered another setback in the long battle for the northern Syrian city of Kobane, as Kurdish fighters there reportedly captured buildings housing a significant quantity of IS weapons and ammunition.
The gain, reported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in London, came a day after US Central Command said airstrikes by US warplanes over the weekend destroyed seven IS positions around Kobane.
The strikes were part of a wider campaign against IS targets in Syria and Iraq that included attacks on a crude oil facility in Syria and near the key Iraqi oil refinery in Baiji. The sale of oil has been a crucial source of revenue for the IS jihadists in their campaign to set up a 鈥渃aliphate鈥� in the areas of northern Syria and Iraq under their control.
A report late Monday to the United Nations Security Council estimates IS oil revenues to be $846,000 to $1,645,000 a day and urges the Security Council to order the seizure of all oil trucks entering and leaving IS-controlled territory, according to The New York Times. The report, by an expert panel appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, also is seeking to ban the sale of antiquities, another revenue source, from areas under IS control.
Also on Tuesday in Iraq, which has been struggling to regain territory lost in humiliating fashion last summer to a sustained IS onslaught, security forces entered the country鈥檚 largest oil refinery for the first time in five months, Reuters reports, citing a police colonel and state television.
According to a separate Reuters report from Beirut,聽Kurdish fighters in Kobane seized six IS-held buildings and a large quantity of guns and ammunition.
The reported setbacks to the Islamic State, diplomatically and on the ground, followed the release Sunday of the latest beheading video, in which an IS executioner stands over the severed head of an American aid worker, Abdul-Rahman Kassig.
As 海角大神鈥檚 Howard LaFranchi wrote Monday,聽some analysts noted that the video was devoid of the production quality of its predecessors, perhaps an indication of the pressure from US bombing and surveillance.