Beirut, Sep 18 (IANS/EFE): The Islamic State (IS) Sunni terrorist group has seized control over 16 Kurdish villages in the last 24 hours in the northern Syrian province of Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported Thursday.

The villages are located in eastern and western Kobani, a region where Kurds are a majority.

The insurgents used tanks and artillery during the attack, which caused a yet undetermined number of deaths among civilians and Kurdish forces, according to SOHR.

The Kurdish People's Protection Units are one of the militias fighting the rapid advance of the IS, which proclaimed an Islamic caliphate last June in territories under its control in Syria and Iraq.

At least 18 people were killed Thursday in airstrikes launched by Syrian forces on al-Bab, an IS stronghold north of the city of Aleppo, SOHR added.

The UN estimates that 191,369 people, 9,000 of them children, have died between March 2011 and April this year in the Syrian conflict pitting opposition fighters against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.