At least 30 people were killed in two suicide attacks on two checkpoints run by Kurdish fighters in Syria's northeastern city of Hasakah on Monday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
“The attacks targeted checkpoints run by Kurdish fighters on the western entrance of the city. They occurred within minutes of each other,” Rami Abdelrahman from the Observatory said.
For more than three weeks, Syria's Kurds have been engaged in heavy fighting with fighters from the Islamic State group which is trying to seize the border town of Kobani after taking large parts of Syria and Iraq.
On Monday, the radical group raised its black flag on a building on the outskirts of Kobani.
The northeastern province of Hasakah, which borders Iraq and Turkey, has a population of over one million, 70 percent Kurd and 30 percent Arab. Kurds compose around 10 percent of Syria's 23 million population. They are mainly Sunnis.
