Kurdish militants Thursday killed 11 terrorists of the Islamic State (IS) Sunni radical group and captured four others in Syria's predominantly Kurdish town of Kobani near the Syrian-Turkish border, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported.
This came about while the toll in the ongoing anti-IS protests in neighbouring Turkey continued to rise.
The 11 IS fighters were killed during their ongoing clashes with the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), Xinhua cited the SOHR as saying, adding that the bodies of those killed were still tossed at a square in Kobane.
The YPG also managed to take four IS fighters into captivity in several districts of the city.
Meanwhile, the pan-Arab al-Mayadeen TV said thousands of Kurdish people have gathered in the western part of the northern al-Qamishly province in support of Kobani.
Kobani, Syria's largest Kurdish town, has seen intense battles over the past three weeks as IS fighters seemed determined to storm the city due to its strategic location.
The capture of the city would enable the IS to link their self-declared capital of al-Raqqa province with Kobani and stretch their territory onto the borders with Turkey.
The SOHR said earlier Thursday that the IS has captured one-third of Kobane amid violent clashes.
According to a report from Ankara, the toll in the anti-IS protests across Turkey rose to 24 Thursday.
Most of those killed were from the southeastern provinces where the Turkish government has declared a curfew to quell the unrest that has been fueled mainly by supporters of the outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) and Hizbullah, a radical Islamist group in Turkey whose members are mostly Kurdish, Xinhua reported citing the private Dogan News Agency.
The Turkish authorities lifted the curfew in some provinces Thursday as violence subsided.
In a written statement Thursday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the protests were aimed at sabotaging the peace process between Kurdish rebels and the government, as the Turkish authorities were holding peace talks with the jailed PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan, to end decades of Kurdish insurgency.
Demonstrations erupted Monday and turned violent in protesting the Turkish government's failure to help prevent the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani from falling to the IS.
The pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), which is affiliated with the PKK, has been calling on the Kurds in Turkey to hold demonstrations against the IS's "attempt to massacre" Syrian Kurds in the city of Kobane.
The HDP urged the Turkish government to defend Syrian Kurds in the neighbouring country, where fierce clashes have dragged on between IS militants and Kurdish fighters for three weeks.
