Daash versus Syrian Kurds - struggle for control

In a sign of growing aggression against the Kurds, the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant known as ISIS, which was disowned earlier this year by the al-Qaida leadership, has launched an offensive against Syrian Kurds, both in the far northeast adjacent to the borders with Iraq and Turkey, and in Kurdish areas in Aleppo province.
 
Kurdish sources concede militiamen from the Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD are suffering reversals.
 
The PYD, an affiliate of the Turkish Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a separatist movement that has battled the Turkish government for Kurdish autonomy for three decades, scored a series of victories over jihadist rebel groups last autumn and during the winter.
 
Those successes emboldened its leaders to declare self-rule in an area in the northeast that Kurds call Rojeva. The PYD is the largest and best organized of 17 major Kurdish political factions.
 
But just days ago, ISIS fighters abducted 193 Kurds, mainly teenagers and students, from the village of Al Qbasin northeast of Aleppo.  
 
And on May 29 jihadists killed 15 Kurds, including seven children, in an attack on a village near the largely Kurdish town of Ras al-Ain on the Turkish border, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based pro-opposition group that relies on a network of activists on the ground for its information.