Beirut: Backed by US-led coalition air strikes, Kurdish fighters fought their way Friday into a northeastern Syrian town that was a key stronghold of Daesh militants, only days after the group abducted dozens of Christians in the volatile region, Syrian activists and Kurdish officials said.

The victory marks a second blow to Daesh in a month, highlighting the growing role of Syria’s Kurds as the most effective fighting force against the Daesh. In January, Kurdish forces drove Daesh militants from the town of Kobani near the Turkish border after a months-long fight, dealing a very public defeat to the extremists.

But it is also tempered by this week’s horrific abductions by Daesh militants of more than 220 Christian Assyrians in the same area, along the fluid and fast shifting front line in Syria.

The town of Tel Hamees in Syria’s northeastern Hassakeh province is strategically important because it links territory controlled by Daesh in Syria and Iraq.

The province, which borders Turkey and Iraq, is predominantly Kurdish but also has populations of Arabs and predominantly Christian Assyrians and Armenians.

“We are now combing the town for explosives and remnants of terrorists,” said Redur Khalil, a spokesman for the Kurdish fighters, known as the People’s Protection Units or YPG.

Speaking to The Associated Press over the phone from the outskirts of Tel Hamees, he said the town was a key stronghold for Daesh and had served as a staging ground for the group’s operations in the Iraqi town of Sinjar and the city of Mosul.

Dislodging the group from Tel Hamees cuts a supply line from Iraq, Khalil said.

The push on the town’s eastern and southeastern edges came after the Kurdish troops, working with Christian militias and Arab tribal fighters, seized dozens of nearby villages from the Daesh extremists. US-led coalition forces provided cover, striking at Daesh infrastructure in the region for days.

More than 200 militants died in the fighting, and at least eight troops fighting alongside YPG, including an Australian national who has been with the Kurdish forces for three months, Khalil said.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists inside Syria, said Daesh defenses collapsed and the militants fled after Kurdish fighters broke into Tel Hamees from the east and south.

The Observatory’s director, Rami Abdul Rahman, said the Kurds seized more than 100 villages around Tel Hamees and that ground battles and air strikes around the town have killed at least 175 Daesh fighters in the past several days in some of the latest losses for the group since Kobani.

Some 15,000 villagers have fled the fighting, he added.

The Kurds in Syria and Iraq have emerged as the most effective force fighting Daesh, which controls about a third of Iraq and Syria - much of it captured in a lighting blitz last spring and summer, as Iraqi army forces melted away in the face of the militant onslaught.

In Syria, they have teamed up with moderate rebels for territorial gains against the group.

Elsewhere in Hassakeh, Daesh fighters this week captured dozens of mostly Christian villages to the west of Tel Hamees - taking at least 220 Assyrian Christians hostage, according to activists. The fate of those abducted was still unknown.