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 Redur Xelil, spokesman for the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia said
around eight members of Islamic State had also escaped north towards
the Turkish border after the Kurds pushed back.
"There are still search operations in neighbourhoods where they
might be hiding. The town is quiet now," he said in an online
message.
In Syria's northeast, Kurdish forces and the army fought separate
battles with Islamic State around Hasaka city overnight as the
hardline group tried to capture more areas of the major urban centre
near the Iraqi border, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
monitoring group said on Saturday.
In Kobani, the YPG blew up a school building used by Islamic State
earlier on Saturday, the Observatory said, and plumes of smoke could
be seen rising into the air from the Turkish side of the border.
Islamic State killed around 200 civilians in the town and
surrounding areas in the attack which started on Thursday, the
Observatory said, describing it as one of the worst massacres
committed by the group in Syria. Kobani was the site of one of the biggest battles against Islamic
State last year. The Kurdish YPG force drove the militants back from
the town with the help of U.S. air strikes, after four months of
fighting and siege.
 The YPG previously described the latest attack on Kobani as "a
suicide mission" rather than an attempt to capture the town.
In the northeast, Islamic State does seem to be attempting to wrest
Hasaka city from government control. Syrian state television said on
Saturday the city was safe and under control, but the Observatory
said fierce clashes continued in the southwest, south and southeast.
Hasaka is important to all sides fighting in an area that sits
between Islamic State-held territory in Syria and Iraq and which
reaches north up to the Turkish border.
The assault there will test the Syrian army's capacity to hold on to
areas far from the major government-held cities in the west. The
YPG's Xelil said the government forces appeared to be holding on to
their positions by early on Saturday.
Islamic State launched an assault on government-held areas of Hasaka
early on Thursday and the United Nations says the violence is
estimated to have displaced up to 120,000 people.
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Islamic State said in statements on Saturday it attacked areas east
of the city and in a video posted online claimed to have entered
western areas. State television quoted the head of the police in
Hasaka as saying its special forces had "eliminated Daesh
terrorists" in the city, using an Arabic acronym for the group.
Hasaka is divided into areas run separately by Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad's government and Kurdish authorities and has a mixed
population of Arabs, Kurds and Christians.
Islamic State has been back on the offensive after two weeks of
defeats at the hands of Kurdish-led forces, supported by U.S.-led
air strikes. This week the Kurds advanced to within 50 km (30 miles)
of Raqqa city, the group's de facto capital.
Late on Friday Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi appealed
to residents to take up arms to defend Hasaka.
"I call on every man, every young woman and every young man able to
carry weapons to move immediately and join the frontline positions
to defend the city," he said on state television.
While Islamic State had managed to advance slightly in Hasaka on
Friday, seizing one army position, heavy Syrian air force strikes
hindered the attack, according to the Observatory.
The U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs,
citing government figures, said that since the attack on Hasaka
started 120,000 people were estimated to have been displaced within
the city and to surrounding villages, as well as to the northern
districts of the province.
(Additional reporting by Murad Sezer in SURUC, Turkey and David
Dolan in ANKARA; Editing by Susan Fenton and John Stonestreet)
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