BEIRUT/BAGHDAD: Daesh executed dozens of people in different crisis zones of the Middle East on Thursday.

The terror group killed at least 23 Syrian Kurds, among them women and children, in a village south of the border town of Kobani, a monitor said.

“Daesh men shot dead at least 23 people in the Kurdish village of Barkh Butan, including women and children and residents who had taken up arms to fight,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Daesh launched a surprise attack on Kobani on Thursday, using at least two suicide car bombs and clashing with Kurdish forces.

Kobani, on the border with Turkey, is an important symbol in the battle against the radicals, having been secured by Kurdish militia with US-led air support in January after four months of ferocious fighting.

Armed terrorists briefly entered Barkh Butan, about 20 km south of Kobani, in the morning but withdrew after coalition airstrikes and the arrival of Kurdish forces, Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said.

At least five extremists were killed in clashes with residents, the Observatory said.

Arin Shekhmos, a Kurdish activist in northern Syria, confirmed the executions.

Meanwhile, Daesh militants beheaded 12 men from rival Syrian rebel movements accused of fighting against them, in a video released on Thursday.

It is the latest in a long series of mass beheadings by Daesh, and comes two days after the group released a video showing it killing 16 people in neighboring Iraq, drowning some of them in a cage.

Three of those killed in the new video were from Jaysh Al-Islam, one of the main rebel groups in the Damascus area, and a fourth from Al-Nusra Front, Al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate and Daesh’s main rival in the country.

While the men, whom Daesh said were captured during a battle, were apparently from Syrian rebel groups, their heads and beards were shaved, likely as an insult by Daesh.

Separately, Daesh detonated a car bomb and then opened fire on Iraqi troops in the western province of Anbar on Thursday, killing 14 soldiers, security sources said.

Twenty-seven soldiers were also wounded in Thursday’s attack in Anbar’s Nadheem Al-Taqseem region.

In the town of Hit, west of Ramadi, artillery fire and rocket attacks targeted the local irrigation department, killing nine people and wounding 13.