Uneasy calm at contested northern Syrian town

Precarious calm prevailed around the beleaguered town of Ain Al-Arab in northern Syria on Monday, in what appeared to be an undeclared lull in fighting between assaulting Muslim militants and Kurdish militias defending it, a monitoring group said.
The town, located close to the Syrian-Turkish border, was rocked with a rumbling blast at midnight, while the attacking gunmen of the radical movement, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, and the defending Kurdish forces engaged in sporadic clashes with various arms on the axes skirting Ain Al-Arab, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, in a statement on Monday.
ISIL fighters made new futile bids to burst into the Kurds' defenses during the night hours, following fierce fighting for control of a nearby mountainous ridge which overlooks much of the Ain Al-Arab area.
At least 19 ISIL gunmen and 27 Kurds have been killed since the ISIL launched a multi-pronged offensive on the key town on the 16th of the past month.
The ISIL has recently expanded its influence in Syrian and Iraqi territories, declaring a self-styled Islamic caliphate, named "the Islamic State." Its rapid expansion has prompted the United States to revise its disengagement policy toward Iraq and Syria, forming an international military coalition to contain the new threat.
So far, the coalition has been staging air strikes on the ISIL bases and strongholds, amid recurring Western decision-makers' rhetoric reflecting no desire to engage infantry forces in the fighting against the militants, who have slit throat of at least four Western citizens in defiance of the campaign.
In Hendrat, northern Aleppo, fierce clashes took place between the Syrian regime forces and opposition fighters. On Damascus' outskirts, regime aircraft dropped explosives-rigged barrels on opposition positions and strongholds, coinciding with fighting on several axes in the rural regions around the capital.