41 fighters from ISIS were killed today in the Kurdish city of Kobani (Ayn al-Arab in Arabic) along the northern Syrian border with Turkey. The fighters were killed in clashes with Kurdish militias, and in US airstrikes.
ISIS has been contesting Kobani for several months now, and has taken parts of the city, though predictions of them wrapping up the battle haven’t proven any more true than Kurdish predictions of expelling them outright.
As with an awful lot of important battles in the Syrian Civil War, the fight for Kobani appears stalemated, with massive death tolls on both sides, virtually the entire civilian population relocated to Turkey as refugees, and no end in sight.
Kobani is the last major Kurdish city to the west of ISIS territory, and would give ISIS a contiguous territory deep into Aleppo Province. More important for both sides however is the significance of “winning” the battle at this point, after so many months of fighting.