IS kills 146 civilians in assault on Syria's Kobane

The Islamic State group killed 146 civilians in its offensive on the Kurdish town of Kobane, in what a monitor said on Friday was one of the militant group's "worst massacres" in Syria.

The killing spree, which took place mostly inside Kobane itself, was widely seen as vengeance for a series of defeats inflicted on the militants by Kurdish militia in recent weeks.

At least 120 civilians were killed in a 24-hour rampage on Kobane, and another 26 were executed in a nearby village, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. 

The assault began on Thursday when three IS suicide bombers blew up vehicles at the entrances to the town, which has become a symbol of Kurdish resistance.

Women and children were among civilians whose bodies were found in their homes and in the streets, the Observatory said.

"According to medical sources and Kobane residents, 120 civilians were executed by IS in their homes or killed by the group's rockets or snipers," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

"When they entered the town, the jihadists took up positions in buildings at the southeast and southwest entrances, firing at everything that moved."

Local journalist Mostafa Ali said there was no military dimension to the assault.

"IS doesn't want to take over the town. They just came to kill the highest number of civilians in the ugliest ways possible," he told AFP.

"Every family in Kobane lost a family member on Thursday," Kurdish activist Arin Shekhmos said. 

'Human shields' in Kobane

The IS militants entered Kobane at dawn on Thursday disguised as Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) fighters, said Ali.

They took up positions in buildings in the south of the town, using civilians as "human shields". 

"There are at least 70 civilians in these various neighbourhoods that have been taken hostage by IS," Ali added.

"The YPG has sent reinforcements and have encircled the buildings, but the situation is difficult. The YPG doesn't want to hurt the women and children there."

More than 1,000 fleeing civilians waited on the Syrian side of the frontier with Turkey on Friday, carefully watched by Turkish troops and police on the other side.

Relatives who had made it to the Turkish side cried in despair, an AFP photographer reported.

Kobane was the scene of one of IS's most dramatic defeats in January when it was ousted by Kurdish militia backed by US-led air strikes after four months of heavy fighting.

Kurdish fighters have gone on to seize Tal Abyad, another border town farther east, in a heavy blow to the militants' supply lines.

On Friday, the Turkish military ordered the dishonourable discharge of a soldier IS briefly abducted in January, Hurriyet newspaper reported.

Ozgur Ors was dismissed for "failure to resist ISIS, being an instrument for the organisation's propaganda in the media and harming the reputation of the Turkish Armed Forces," it reported. 

Full details of his case have been kept under wraps. 

Civilians flee Hasakeh

IS has hit back against Kurdish victories with an offensive against Hasakeh in the northeast, capital of the mainly Kurdish province of the same name.

Abdel Rahman said IS had seized two neighbourhoods in the city's south as government forces, who jointly controlled the city with Kurdish militia, carried out airstrikes.

At least 20 militants and 30 pro-government fighters were killed when IS captured southern parts of Hasakeh.

On Thursday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the clashes had displaced an estimated 60,000 people.

Roughly 50,000 were displaced within Hasakeh, while another 10,000 had fled north towards Amuda.

Shekhmos, the activist, said civilians from southern neighbourhoods had fled to Kurdish-controlled parts of the city, but that the YPG was not yet involved in the fighting.

The militants previously advanced to the southern edge of Hasakeh in May but were pushed back by government forces.

In southern Syria, a rebel alliance pressed an assault on the city and provincial capital of Daraa which it began on Thursday, with some 40 people reported killed.

President Bashar al-Assad's government has already lost two provincial capitals in the four-year-old civil war: IS-held Raqqa in the Euphrates valley and Idlib in the northwest, which is held by a rebel alliance including Al-Qaeda.

At least 230,000 people have been killed since Syria's conflict erupted in 2011.