Syrian Kurds capture Islamist commander and plan to create temporary autonomous government

Syria's Kurds are planning to create a temporary autonomous government to administer Kurdish regions in the north of the war-torn country, Kurdish officials told French press agency AFP on Friday.
"We think that the crisis in Syria will not end anytime soon, so we need to create democratic self-rule in western Kurdistan," said Salih Muslim, head of Syria's Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).
Western Kurdistan refers to Kurdish majority areas in northern Syria, including Hassakeh province in the northeast of the country and parts of Aleppo province.
"This has been our project since 2007," added Muslim, stressing nonetheless that the government would be temporary.
"This is provisional," he said. "Once there is a broad agreement on the future of Syria, we will put an end to this autonomy."
Shirzad Izidi, a spokesman for the People's Council of Western Kurdistan, another Syrian Kurdish group, confirmed the plans and said the Kurdish administration will take measures to organize elections in Kurdish areas.
“There is an idea also to write an interim constitution so that there will be no vacuum," Izidi told AFP.
Kurdish regions of northern Syria have been administered by local Kurdish councils since regime forces withdrew from the areas in the middle of 2012.
The redeployment was seen as a tactical move by the regime, encouraging the Kurds to avoid allying with the opposition in order to maintain their new-found autonomy.
Kurds represent about 15 percent of the Syrian population, and are mostly concentrated in the northern part of the country.
Earlier this week, Kurdish fighters expelled militants from the town of Ras al-Ain and the nearby border crossing with Turkey, and fighting between the groups was continuing elsewhere in Hassakeh province in north-east Syria.

Source: AFP The town of Tel Abyad on the Turkish border was deserted on Sunday 21 July.  According to the London based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights fights around the town are still raging on after the Kurds on Saturday captured a military commander of the al-Qaeda affiliate the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (ISIS), whose name is Abu Musab. Earlier the Kurds expelled the Islamists from the town of Ras al-Ayn in the Hasaka province. According to the Observatory at least 54 men were killed in five days of fighting, 35  from the Islamists and 19 militants from the Kurdish forces, mainly form the Popular Protection Units YPG.