IS group seizes 16 villages Syria

Islamic State fighters backed by tanks have captured 16 Kurdish villages over the past 24 hours in northern Syria near the Turkish border, prompting civilians to flee their homes amid fears of retribution by the extremists sweeping through the area, activists said. For more than a year, the Islamic State group and Kurdish militias have been locked in a fierce fight in several pockets of northern Syria where large Kurdish populations reside. The clashes are but one aspect of Syria's broader civil war — a multilayered conflict that the UN says has killed more than 190,000. Islamic State militants have taken over the 16 Kurdish villages in Syria's northern Kurdish region of Kobani, also known as Ayn Arab, since Wednesday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. It said there were casualties on both sides, but that Kurdish civilians were fleeing their villages for fear that Islamic State group fighters ‘will commit massacres against civilians,’ according to AP.