BEIRUT: Kurdish fighters captured six buildings from Islamic State militants besieging the Syrian town of Kobani on Tuesday and seized a large haul of their weapons and ammunition, a group monitoring the war said.

Islamic State has been trying to take control of the town, also known as Ayn al-Arab, for more than two months in an assault that has driven tens of thousands of Kurdish civilians over the border into Turkey and drawn strikes by US-led forces.

The hardline Muslim movement, an offshoot of Al Qaeda, has declared an Islamic caliphate covering large areas of land that it has captured in other parts of Syria and neighbouring Iraq.

The six buildings seized by Kurdish fighters from Islamic State were in a strategic location in the town’s north, close to Security Square where the main municipal offices are based, said Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Observatory, a group that tracks the conflict using sources on the ground.

Published in Dawn, November 19th, 2014