BEIRUT: Kurdish fighters battling ISIS in Syria's Kobani have captured a strategic hilltop, giving them line of fire over the town, activists said Monday.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Kurdish People's People Units (YPG) had seized the Mishtenur hilltop after fierce clashes overnight.

"The military operation led to the deaths of at least 11 Islamic State [ISIS] fighters, and the seizure of large quantities of weapons and ammunition," the Observatory said.

Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said the advance was a key strategic victory for the YPG, putting ISIS resupply lines to Aleppo in the west and Raqqa in the east within their line of fire.

ISIS has been battling to capture Kobani, on the Syrian-Turkish border, since mid-September, and at one point seemed poised to overrun the Kurdish town.

But Kurdish fighters backed by massive air raids by the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS have gradually pushed back the jihadis, who now hold around 15 percent of the town.