Syrian Kurd women trained to fight extremists

The Kurdish Women Defense Brigades (YPJ) have started fighting training programs for Syrian and Kurd women in the northeastern city of Qamishli so that they can defend their villages if they are attacked by militants.
Kurdish Syrians have been engaged in, sometimes fierce, fighting with extremist militants especially from the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front and Islamic State of Iraq and Levant terrorist group, who tried to seize Kurdish areas for a future state that they plan for.
The Kurd minority in Syria tried to stay away from the more than two-year foreign-backed insurgency in the Arab country, but since coming under attack by anti-Syria miltiants in the past few months, they started to gather strength and defend their hometowns.
Many people have been killed from the Kurdish-dominated areas in Syria and fighting is still going on in some parts.
Only on August 5, militants from al-Nusra Front attacked Tal Abyad district of Raqqa Governorate in Syria, killing 330 women and elderly men as well as 120 children.
Syria has been gripped with a deadly insurgency since 2011 when pro-reform protests turned to an all-out war by infiltration of militants and terrorist groups from across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.
The already war-torn country is now threatened by a US assault which Washington has been trying to gather international support for, but has failed to do so up until now.
The war rhetoric against Syria intensified after foreign-backed opposition forces accused the government of President Bashar al-Assad of launching the chemical attack on militant strongholds in the suburbs of Damascus on August 21.
Damascus has vehemently denied the accusations, saying the attack was carried out by the militants themselves as a false-flag operation.
According to US Secretary of States John Kerry, some of US Middle Eastern allies have agreed to give financial support to a military strike, but they will not take part in it.
Pope Francis of the Roman Catholic Church warned against military actions against Syria and urged world leaders to pull humanity out of a “spiral of sorrow and death.”