Kurdish YPG kills family of 13 near Qamishli

 (Zaman Al Wasl)- At least 13 people from the same family have been killed near Qamishli city, northeast Syria, by Kurdish militant group, people of al-Matiniya village said they found their bodies buried in mass graveyard.

The new massacre followed killing of 42 people, including women and children, in Arab-inhabited villages of Tal Khalil and al-Hajiya, last Sunday by fighters of the People Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of Kurdish Democratic Union party (PYD) over accusations of supporting the Islamic State of Iraq ans Syria (ISIS), activists told Zaman al-Wasl.

On Thursday, ISIS fighters backed by tanks have captured 21 Kurdish villages near the Turkish border, prompting civilians to flee their homes amid fears of retribution by the extremists sweeping through the area, AP 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 U.N. says has killed more than 190,000.

Since Wednesday, Islamic State militants appear to have gained the upper hand in Syria's northern Kurdish region of Kobani, also known as Ayn Arab, overrunning 21 Kurdish villages, 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."

The fighting forced nearly 3,000 people to try flee to Turkey and gathered near the border Turkish district of Suruc, according to the private Dogan News Agency. A video released by the agency showed Syrian refugees walking to the border with some Kurds asking to be allowed to cross to stay with relatives on the Turkish side of the frontier.

Like many fronts of Syria's civil war, momentum in the fight between the extremists and the Kurds has swung back and forth. Earlier this week, for example, Kurdish fighters captured 14 villages from the Islamic State in other parts of Syria.

The fighting around Kobani is part of the Islamic State's wider battle in Syria as the extremists look to seize control of the few areas in the northeast still outside of their hands.

The U.S. has been conducting airstrikes against Islamic State fighters in Iraq since early August. President Barack Obama last week authorized strikes against the group in Syria as well, and his administration is currently trying to cobble together an international coalition to go after the group. The U.S. is already flying reconnaissance missions over Syria. (With AP)