ISIS Blood Bath in Ibdil

ISIS may be stymied by air strikes in Kobane, but it and other rebels of the Nusra Front briefly captured Idlib, a major Syrian city thirty miles from Aleppo. They managed to execute 70 or more Syrian soldiers, many of whom were senior officers, in the governor's office according to the UK's Independent newspaper. Police and security men in the headquarters defected to the militants. The army officers were apparently identified in advance for decapitation.  Too late to prevent the slaughter, militants were pushed out in a government counter-attack.  The stunning near loss of Ibdil caught Damascus off guard after a year long siege of the city and demonstrates just how hard-pressed the Syrian regime is in its desperate fight against what it labels "terrorists".  The eastern city of Raqqa has been in the hands of ISIS for months.  Estimates of government losses in the civil war are in the range of 33,000 to 46,000 men.