Battle of Tell Abyad (2016)
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a month before the battle's beginning a large number of ISIL sleeper agents disguised as civilians and SDF or YPG fighters entered Tell Abyad.[6][7] On 27 February 2016, at around 23:00 local time (9 pm GMT),[4] over a hundred Islamic State militants attacked the YPG controlled town of Tell Abyad (Gire Spi in Kurdish), a key crossing along the Syrian-Turkish border, just hours after a general ceasefire in Syria took effect.[12] The battle began when ISIL fighters infiltrated the suburbs of Tel Abyad, storming dozens of homes in the villages of Hamam Turkman and Ain al-Arous, and executing 23 civilians.Russian Lt. Gen. Sergei Kuralenko the head of Russia’s reconciliation monitoring center in Latakia, said that the assault on Tal Abyad involved up to 100 armed militants with heavy artillery support from Turkish territory.[9] Mehmet Yuksel, a representative of the Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party to the United States argued that Ankara hired the attackers from Syrian refugee camps in Turkey.