Kurdish forces expel ISIL fighters from Syrian border town

Syrian Kurdish forces expelled Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters from Syria's Kobane on June 27 and took back full control of the town on the Turkish border, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

There were still some clashes between the YPG and ISIL to the south of the town, the Observatory's founder Rami Abdulrahman said, hours after an explosion hit Kobane. 

The cause of the explosion, which appeared to come from the centre of the town, was not immediately clear, said a Reuters cameraman who was near the town at the Turkish border.

Syrian Kurdish forces and the Syrian army fought separate battles with ISIL around Hasaka city in northeast Syria overnight as the hardline group tried to capture more areas of the major urban centre near the Iraqi border, a monitor said on June 27.
   
ISIL launched an assault on government-held areas of Hasaka early on June 25 and the United Nations says the violence is estimated to have displaced up to 120,000 people.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the conflict using sources on the ground, said the Kurdish YPG militia fought with ISIL fighters on the outskirts of the Ghwyran neighbourhood in Hasaka's southeast overnight.

Hasaka is divided into areas run separately by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government and Kurdish authorities and has a mixed population of Arabs, Kurds and Christians.
   
It is important to all sides fighting in an area that sits between ISIL-held territory in Syria and Iraq and which reaches north up to the Turkish border.
   
The YPG says it does not coordinate with the Syrian army and allied militia, which fought their own battles with ISIL in the southwestern...