Islamic State militants shot dead 20 civilians in an attack on a village during an attack on the northern Syrian city of Kobane, a monitoring group said Thursday.
The massacre took place in a village some 35 kilometres south of Kobane, the UK-based Syrian Human Rights Observatory said.
Some of the murdered civilians had taken up arms to defend themselves from IS fighters who attacked the village.
Kurdish fighters later drove out the IS jihadists from the village, said the monitor, which relies for its information on a network of activists and doctors inside Syria.
The IS militants reentered the symbolic border town of Kobane and seized parts of the northeastern city of Hasakeh amid clashes that killed at least 30 Syrian soldiers and 20 IS fighters, the Syrian Observatory said.
The apparent two-pronged IS offensive came as Kurdish fighters from the Popular Protection Units (YPG) cut a major supply line for IS near its stronghold of Raqqa in northern Syria.
IS has recently suffered a string of defeats to Kurdish forces who in January re-took Kobane after IS launched a major offensive on the city last September, prompting more than 100,000 people to flee to Turkey.
