Kurdish militia fought off a fresh assault by the Islamic State (IS) on a key Syrian town early yesterday, after one desperate woman defender carried out a suicide attack against the jihadist group.
Militants from the group formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant attempted to storm the town of Kobane on the Turkish border from the east and west of a strategic hill to the south, but Kurdish fighters repelled them, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Idris Nahsen, a Syrian Kurdish official in Kobane, said the town had come under heavy bombardment by the jihadists and there had been fierce clashes as Kurdish fighters fought them off.
Photo: AFP
IS fighters seized part of Mishtenur Hill, which overlooks Kobane, late on Saturday, but US-led air strikes slowed their advance.
Nahsen said IS fighters were just 1km from the town and that air strikes alone were not enough to stop them, adding that there was no coordination between coalition commanders and Kurdish fighters on the ground.
In a sign of the Kurdish defenders’ mounting desperation, a female suicide bomber blew herself up at an IS position east of Kobane on Sunday, the observatory said.
It was the first reported instance of a female Kurdish fighter employing a tactic often used by the jihadists, said the Britain-based watchdog.
Nahsen confirmed the suicide bombing, but was non-committal on whether there would be more.
Sunday’s fighting at Kobane — also known as Ain al-Arab — killed at least 19 Kurdish fighters and 27 IS jihadists, the observatory said.
Under assault by IS for nearly three weeks, the town has become a crucial battleground in the fight against the group, who sparked further outrage at the weekend with the release of a video showing the beheading of Briton Alan Henning.
IS began its advance on Kobane on Sept. 16, seeking to cement its grip over a long stretch of the Syria-Turkey border.
The offensive prompted a mass exodus from the town and surrounding countryside, with about 186,000 people fleeing into Turkey.
One mortar round hit a house on Turkish territory a few kilometers from Kobane on Sunday, wounding five people, medical sources said.
The Turkish parliament last week authorized the government to join the campaign, but so far no plans for military action have been announced, to the dismay of Turkey’s large Kurdish minority.
After first launching strikes against the extremist Sunni group in Iraq in August, Washington has built a coalition of allies to wage an air campaign against IS.
In Iraq, the pace of the coalition air campaign against IS picked up on Sunday with the first strike by Belgium and maiden combat sorties by Australia and the Netherlands.
Britain, France and Denmark have also committed aircraft to the campaign against IS in Iraq, where a fightback by Kurdish forces in the north has made slow progress, while federal troops have come under renewed assault by the jihadists west of Baghdad.
Australia on Friday authorized strikes on IS militants in Iraq and its military yesterday said its fighter jets have flown their first armed combat mission in Iraq against IS, but did not launch air strikes.
Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Sunday said US Vice President Joe Biden apologized to Abu Dhabi crown prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nehayan for “any implications” made in a speech indicating the UAE had supported Islamist militants in Syria.
Biden angered US allies when he suggested in a speech to Harvard University students on Thursday that Turkey, Qatar and the UAE had extended “billions of dollars and tens of thousands of tonnes of weapons” to Sunni fighters trying to oust the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The UAE is part of the US-led coalition and its air force participated in strikes on targets belonging to IS and the al-Nusra Front.
The White House on Saturday said Biden had spoken with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to clarify his comments and apologize for “any implication that Turkey or other allies and partners in the region had intentionally supplied or facilitated the growth of ISIL [IS] or other violent extremists in Syria.”
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