Syria Direct: News Update 2-12-15

Kurds expand zone of control in Kobani countryside

Fighters with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) captured four new villages in the western Kobani countryside Wednesday from the Islamic State, reported the Kurdish Hawar News Agency.

Kurdish units backed by rebel fighters have extended their line of control 25-40 km into the eastern, southeastern and southwestern countryside in Aleppo province, and have come to control at least 156 villages, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Thursday.

In related news, pro-opposition Kobani Mubasher reported that residents of the Beit Arab village in the southern Kobani countryside found the bodies of 27 IS members Wednesday with gunshot wounds to the head.

“They were tossed between olive trees, far from the points where fighting had broken out.”

SOHR: 1,000 airstrikes in 10 days

The regime has launched over 1,000 airstrikes since the beginning of February that have killed nearly 400 people across Syria and injured 1,200 others, according to a report released Wednesday by the UK-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The report comes in the wake of the regime’s intensification of its bombing campaign against Jaish al-Islam and other rebels in the East Ghouta Damascus suburbs over the past two weeks, as well as fighting with the Free Syrian Army in Daraa this week. 

Of the casualties, at least 270 were civilians, including 49 below the age of 18.

The airstrikes include 537 barrel bomb attacks, despite President Assad’s insistence that the Syrian regime does not use the internationally condemned weapon in an interview with BBC earlier this week. 

Regime warplanes bomb Douma on Wednesday. Photo courtesy of @baraa2abd.

 For more from Syria Direct, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.