ISIS claims small victory after weekend pummelling
BEIRUT -- The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has regained control of a northern Syrian town captured by Kurdish fighters two weeks ago, activists and ISIS-linked social media outlets reported Monday.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said ISIS fighters seized Ein Issa and nearby areas before noon Monday.
The fall of the town -- described as being "liberated" on ISIS-associated outlets -- comes after the main Kurdish militia known as the People's Protection Units, or YPG, captured wide areas in northern Syria from the extremists, including the border town of Tal Abyad, once a main point for ISIS trade and the smuggling in of foreign fighters.
Over the weekend ISIS was also hit hard in its de facto capital of Raqqa, about 30 miles south of Ein Issa, as U.S. military jets carried out one of the largest-scale bombing raids since America joined the fight against the extremists.
CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports most of the targets were infrastructure; roads and especially bridges, 16 of which were destroyed in the city. Those missing bridges were likely to make it far more difficult for ISIS fighters to move around the city, which is divided into sections by waterways, and would also serve to cut the city off from the system of highways across a river that leads into neighboring Iraq to the east, or deeper into Syria.
In another offensive push last month, ISIS fighters attacked the northern Syrian town of Kobani, killing more than 200 people in the town that became a symbol of Kurdish resistance against extremists. Fighting continued for days until ISIS militants were killed or surrendered.
Earlier Monday, ISIS released a new video purporting to show the killing of two Syrian men in the militants' stronghold of Raqqa, allegedly for spying on the group.
ISIS has killed hundreds of people since it declared an Islamic caliphate in June last year with the city of Raqqa as its de facto capital.
The video, which was posted on an ISIS-linked Facebook page, shows two young men in orange jumpsuits, saying they filmed and photographed ISIS-held areas in Syria and sent footage to a person abroad.
They identify themselves as 21-year-old Faysal Hussein Habibi and 20-year-old Bishr Abdul-Azim and say they received $400 a month for the filming. The two are then tied to a tree, after which masked gunmen shoot them in the head at close range.
The video could not be independently verified but it was posted on a page known to be linked to the militant group.