Daesh fighters have seized 16 Kurdish villages in northern Syria in a major advance towards the city of Ayn al-Arab at the borders with Turkey, a Kurdish military official and an activist group said.
Ocalan Iso, a commander in Kurdish armed group YPG, told reporters that Daesh fighters were using heavy weapons including tanks in their attack near the city, known as Kobani in Kurdish, according to the Turkish Zaman newspaper.
Rami Abdel-Rahman, founder of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the villages had been seized in Daesh advance that started Wednesday. "They have a large number of fighters".