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ISIS fighters attempting to retake a town in northern Iraq held by Kurdish peshmerga forces have killed at least 30 Kurds, an Iraqi military spokesman said Sunday, The Daily Star reported.

The battle for the town of Gwer demonstrates ISIS’ ability to still launch offensives in Iraq, despite a monthslong airstrike campaign by a U.S.-led coalition.

And while an alliance of Iraqi troops, Kurdish fighters and Sunni and Shiite militiamen have made some gains, their advance remains tenuous at best.

The fighting began Saturday as the extremists approached Gwer, just outside of the northern city of Mosul, which ISIS controls, said Halgurd Hekmat, a spokesman for Iraqi Kurdish forces in Irbil. Hekmat said he had no information about casualties suffered by ISIS.

Backed by U.S.-led airstrikes, Kurdish forces retook Gwer in August after ISIS’ offensive saw it seize a wide swath of Iraq. Kurdish fighters from Iraq also have deployed in small numbers to help Syrian Kurds battle ISIS in the Syrian border town of Ain al-Arab, known by its Kurdish name Kobani.

Earlier this month, peshmerga fighters also retook small villages around the militant-held town of Sinjar, opening a corridor to help hundreds of Yazidi families trapped atop nearby Mount Sinjar.

ISIS, which has declared a self-styled caliphate, holds about a third of Iraq and neighboring Syria.

In Syria Saturday, state TV and an activist group that tracks the Syrian conflict said that three ISIS members were killed in the east, in the third attack on the group reported in the area this week.

The latest incident occurred in or around the town of Al-Boleel in Deir al-Zor province – not far from where a senior figure in ISIS’ self-declared police force was said to have been killed Tuesday and at least three members of the group were reported abducted Wednesday.

Syrian state TV said the latest attack was carried out by “the popular resistance in the eastern region.” An ISIS vehicle was targeted and three people inside were killed, it reported in a headline ticker.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based anti-regime group that draws on a network of activists to track the war, said preliminary reports echoed that three ISIS activists had been killed after midnight Friday. It identified the target as ISIS’ office in Al-Boleel.

“After the attack, ISIS carried out an arrest campaign,” added Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Observatory. He said ISIS had confiscated Internet equipment in the area, hindering the Observatory’s reporting.