Kurdish forces seize villages near Syrian town of Kobani

KURDISH forces and their Syrian rebel allies have seized a belt of villages around Kobani from Islamic State militants, a senior official said Tuesday, days after they drove the extremists from the Syrian border town, AP, Reported.

  IS militants overran large parts of Kobani and surrounding areas in mid-September, forcing tens of thousands of Kurds to flee to neighboring Turkey. For months Kurdish forces fought to retake Kobani, assisted by airstrikes from the U.S. -led coalition. The battle was seen as a major test of whether the airstrikes could halt the extremists’ advance across Syria and neighboring Iraq.

  The Islamic State group has blamed coalition airstrikes for its defeat in Kobani.

  “Most of the villages close to Kobani have been liberated,” said senior Kurdish official Anwar Muslim. “The rest will be liberated soon,” he said.

  Muslim said Kurdish forces and their allies had secured a diameter of six to nine miles (10 to 15 kilometers) around Kobani.

  According AP, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported similar information.

  Kurdish officials meanwhile asked for international funds to rebuild Kobani. “We liberated the city but most of it is destroyed,” Muslim said.

  In an appeal sent to media outlets, Muslim and other Kurdish officials asked the United Nations to “actively take part in reconstruction of the province” and to open a “humanitarian corridor” to allow displaced Syrians to return, AP, Reported.