MESOP TODAY’S NEWS ROUND UP WEST KURDISTAN : IS captures Kurdish towns

18-9-2014 – The Islamic State took control of a series of villages around the city Ain al-Arab in northern Aleppo from Kurdish PYD battalions and Free Syrian Army fighters Thursday, according to the pro-opposition Smart News Agency. IS’s attack on the villages is part of its larger push to capture the mixed Arab-Kurdish city of Ain al-Arab, known as Korbani in Kurdish, located between its bases in Aleppo and A-Raqqa. Last week, PYD and FSA forces in Aleppo and A-Raqqa formed an unprecedented alliance to combat the IS threat.“IS controls 16 Kurdish villages in the countryside of Ain al-Arab,” the monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Thursday, “using tanks and heavy artillery.”Meanwhile, the official PYD social media account claimed Thursday that the Kurdish forces at one point had reclaimed the villages Wednesday. “[The PYD] killed dozens of IS fighters and liberated a number of villages in vicinity of Kobani [Ain al-Arab].” At the time of publishing it appeared IS had seized the upper hand.