PYD fighters capture ground from ISIS southwest Hasaka: activists

(Zaman Al Wasl)- Clashes have renewed in the northern province of Hasaka between Islamic State and Kurdish PYD forces, media activists said on Friday, reporting death of 8 militants from both sides.

Hasaka Media Center said PYD fighters backed by U.S.-led air strikes have captured Tel Baroud village in the southwest after fierce fighting with ISIS .

Meanwhile, new clashes erupted between ISIS and Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab forces, in al Khan district near the oil-rich town of al-Hawl town, which lies along a strategic ISIS supply route.

Local activists said tens of Arab families have fled southern countryside of Hasaka due to fierce fighting, heading Turkish borders.

Talal Ali Sello, SDF spokesman said Monday that his alliance had driven ISIS out of nearly 200 villages.

Sello said at a press conference that "between Oct. 30 and Nov. 13, an area of 1,362 square kilometres (545 square miles) was cleansed of ISIS".

That area included 196 towns and villages, among them al-Hawl where Sello made his comments.

He said these "victories" had been achieved with air support from a US-led coalition striking ISIS targets in Syria over the past year.

The offensive south of the city of Hassakeh, where control is divided between Syria's regime and Kurdish militia, saw the alliance take several villages before seizing Al-Hawl Thursday.

The SDF was formed in mid-October as an alliance between the powerful Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) and rebel groups including Arab and Assyrian militias.

Since it began in 2011, Syria's war has fractured into a complex array of fronts between Kurds, rebels, regime and jihadists, and has killed more than 250,000 people.

In revant development, Turkey's top diplomat has sought to find a way to overcome the difference between Turkey and the US on the two sides' views of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing the People's Protection Units (YPG) in the fight against the terrorist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), stressing that the YPG is a terrorist organization while the PYD is merely a political party, Turkish Today Zaman reported..

According to the report in the Hürriyet daily, Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioğlu said: “We should differentiate between the PYD and the YPG. The YPG is equivalent to the [Kurdistan Workers' Party] PKK, which is on both Turkey's and the US's lists of terrorist organizations,” Sinirlioğlu was quoted as saying on Thursday. “The PYD, however, is a [political] party, just like the [pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party] HDP in Turkey. The YPG is its armed wing. But the PYD doesn't hold arms in its hands,” Sinirlioğlu added, according to the report.