Militants from the Al-Qaeda splinter group ISIS have announced an offensive against the autonomous "Kobani" Kurdish region in northern Syria along the border with Turkey, while pressing ahead with their gruesome series of public executions in their stronghold, the province of Raqqa.



Ten ISIS fighters were taken prisoner, while Kurdish fighters also destroyed a tank used by ISIS, the media reports said, adding that nine Kurdish fighters were killed in the clashes. The Observatory also reported that a tank used by ISIS had been disabled by the Kurdish fighters.



Separately, the Observatory said that a seemingly trivial act was partly responsible for a massacre by ISIS militants of 25 people, among them 14 rebel fighters and two minors, earlier this month in the Shuyukh region of rural Aleppo.

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