The U.S.-led Syrian Democratic Forces clashed Sunday with ISIS near al-Shaddadi town in Hasaka province, forcing hundreds of families to flee the battleground.
The ongoing fight is over Markada town, the radical group's last footstep in the Kurdish-dominated province, local activists said.
Both warring parties said they had killed and wounded dozen.
In new death tool, 5 people, including two children were died when a sandstorm trucked Hasaka two days ago.
The SDF keep pressing advances in the next-door province of Raqqa, taking control of the eastern countryside.
The SDF fighters have seized 350 square km (135 square miles) in the past week, tightening "their noose" on Islamic State in an advance to isolate its base of operations at Raqqa.
Some 3,000 to 4,000 Islamic State fighters are thought to be holed up in Raqqa city where they continue to erect defenses against the anticipated assault, drawing coalition air strikes to stop them, Colonel Ryan Dillon, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, told Reuters in a phone interview from Baghdad, Reuters reported.
The alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters took three villages from the Islamic State east of Raqaa city after heavy clashes with the radical group, activists said.
Two villages left east of al-Balikh River under ISIS control. Its fall means all eastern countryside to be under the Kurdish-led alliance, such a achievement paving the road Raqqa capture, the de facto capital of the Islamic State group
Meanwhile, SDF forces have been banning the indigenous people from returning to their home in territories under their control unless being guaranteed by Kurdish or Arabic personalities, local activists said.
The discriminative policy has sparked fears of the deliberate demographic change.
Last week, prominent Syrian Journalist was all of shock when the Kurdish militias declined the entry to his grandfathers’ town of Tel Abyad near Raqqa unless finding a 'Guarantor.'
The Guarantor law is showing the black future that we are heading to’ activists said.
It’s been imposed in Manbij and Raqqa
