IS militants launch attack on Syrian Kurdish border town
A Syrian Kurdish official and an activist group say Islamic State militants have launched an attack against a predominantly Kurdish town on the Turkish frontier.
Kurdish Democratic Union Party spokesman Nawaf Khalil says IS fighters opened a "wide-scale and powerful offensive" against Ras al-Ayn, a town of some 50,000 people and home to a border crossing with Turkey. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the fighting is focused in the countryside west and south of Ras al-Ayn.
