Islamic State fighters killed at least 145 civilians in an attack on the Syrian town of Kobani and a nearby village, in what a monitoring group described on Friday as one of the worst massacres carried out by the hardline group in Syria.
Islamic State militants have dug trenches around natural gas and hydrogen tanks at Iraq's largest refinery, raising the stakes in a battle where the price of victory may be the refinery itself.
Around 4,000 refugees have trickled back to the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani but many are wary of returning to the site of a four-month battle between Kurdish and Islamic State forces, officials said on Monday.
Kurdish forces backed by U.S.-led air strikes have regained control of at least 163 villages around the Syrian town of Kobani after driving back Islamic State militants in the past three weeks, a group monitoring the conflict said on Saturday.
