Kurdish woman suicide bomber attacks IS militants in Syria: monitor

A female Kurdish fighter carried out a suicide bomb attack against jihadists from the Islamic State group outside the embattled Syrian border town of Kobane on Sunday, a monitor said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the woman blew herself up at an Islamic State position east of the city, killing a number of jihadists who have surrounded Kobane and are battling to seize it. The bombing was the first reported instance of a female Kurdish fighter carrying out a suicide bombing against the Islamic State group, which has itself often favored the tactic.

We’re not scared of anything. We’ll fight to the last. We’d rather blow ourselves up than be captured by IS.

Diren, a 19-year-old female Kurdish fighter to the BBC

The fighting between the Islamic State group and the Kurds is one aspect of Syria’s multilayered civil war, a conflict that has killed more than 190,000 people since the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011. The Islamic State group has pushed to the outskirts of the town of Kobani, also known as Ayn al-Arab, as it presses its weekslong offensive against the town and its surrounding villages. The assault has forced some 160,000 people to flee across the frontier in one of the biggest single exoduses of Syria’s civil war.

Middle East Islamic State Syria