Kurds set to liberate Tal Abyad after Kobani: Observatory

Kurdish fighters aim to flush the ISIL Takfiri militants from Syria’s strategic town of Tal Abyad on the border with Turkey, says a UK-based group.

Kurdish fighters seized Syria’s flashpoint town of Kobani on the border with Turkey from the ISIL Takfiri terrorists on January 26.

“The next battle after Kobani is Tal Abyad,” Rami Abdel Rahman, the director of the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said on Monday.

Tal Abyad, located about 65 kilometers (40 miles) east of Kobani, is in the Syrian province of Raqqa and the Takfiri militants use it to cross into Turkey.

According to reports from Raqqa, fighting has already begun between the Kurdish fighters and the militants in the villages around Tal Abyad.

Rahman also said that the Takfiri group has beefed up its “strongholds of Minbej and Jarabulus” in the province of Aleppo.

A day before, the director of the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that Kurdish fighters have recaptured over a third of the villages around Kobani from the ISIL Takfiri terrorists.

“The (Kurdish) People’s Protection Units (YPG) have recaptured 128 villages out of some 350 in the past two weeks,” he said.

Syria has been grappling with a deadly crisis since March 2011. The violence fueled by Takfiri groups has so far claimed the lives of over 200,000 people, according to reports. New figures show that over 76,000 people, including thousands of children, lost their lives in Syria last year.

Over 7.2 million Syrians have also become internally displaced due to the ongoing crisis, according to the United Nations.

The Takfiri terrorist groups, with members from several Western countries, control swathes of land in Syria and Iraq, and have been carrying out horrific acts of violence such as public decapitations and crucifixions against all communities such as Shias, Sunnis, Kurds, and Christians.