ISIS militants killed more than 140 civilians in the Syrian town of Kobani Thursday in what activists are calling the group’s second biggest massacre since declaring the establishment of an Islamic caliphate across parts of Iraq and Syria a year ago.
Civilians in the contested border town between Syria and Turkey, otherwise known as Ayn al-Arab, as well as in the nearby village of Brakh Bootan were attacked by ISIS members wearing the uniforms of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), according to the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. More than 200 people were wounded. Elderly people, women and children are among the dead, according to the Observatory.
“They were wearing YPG uniforms, so when people saw them they did not fear them, and they [ISIS] opened fire. Many civilians lost their lives,” Idriss Nassan, a spokesman for the Kurds in Kobani, told CNN. Eyewitnesses say gunmen, some of whom spoke Kurdish, knocked on houses in the city and killed people as they came out.
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