Attacking Islamic State militants met firm Kurdish resistance in the Syrian battleground town of Kobane on Sunday, as Turkey heeded pressure to intervene and handed the US access to its airbases.
However, in Iraq, fighters from the group formerly known as the Islamic State in Syria and the Levant have Iraqi government forces under strong pressure, and a roadside bomb killed the police chief in Anbar Province between Baghdad and the Syrian border.
Farther north, around Iraq’s key oil refinery town of Baiji, the Iraqi army and Sunni Arab tribal allies came under fresh Islamic State attack, prompting a first resupply operation by coalition aircraft.
Photo: Reuters
In Kobane, on Syria’s border with Turkey, a pall of black smoke hung over the strategic town as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported heavy militant losses.
The Islamic State group poured in reinforcements and fired at least 11 rocket-propelled grenades into the town center, the Britain-based monitoring group said.
The Kurds managed to advance 50m toward their headquarters, two days after the militants captured it, but failed to reclaim the location.
“They [militants] are sending fighters without much combat experience,” observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said.
Hundreds gathered on Sunday in Manchester, England, for a memorial service for Alan Henning, the British hostage who was kidnapped and beheaded after traveling to Syria to help deliver aid in a convoy.
Henning’s murder — the fourth of a Western hostage since August — has outraged the Muslim community in Britain and he was hailed as a hero at the ceremony.
Turkey, which has so far been reluctant to get involved in the fighting, has faced international pressure to step in to defend Kobane.
A senior US defense official said it has now granted the US access to its air bases for the campaign, including a key installation near the Syrian border.
“Details of usage are still being worked out,” the official said.
In southern Turkey, US crews have long operated out of Incirlik Air Base and about 1,500 US Air Force personnel are stationed there. US aircraft bombing Islamic State militants are reportedly flying out of airbases in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar.
On a call with Turkish Minister of National Defence Ismet Yilmaz, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel thanked Turkey for its “willingness to contribute to coalition efforts, to include hosting and conducting training for Syrian opposition members,” his spokesman said.
The US military said it and its Saudi and Emirati allies conducted four air strikes in Syria on Sunday, all but one in Kobane. Despite that, Pentagon officials have said there is a limit to what they can do without ground forces.
However, the top US officer said US military advisers were likely to take a more direct role once Iraqi forces are ready to fight to retake the country’s second city, Mosul, which militants overran in June.
“My instinct at this point is that will require a different kind of advising and assisting because of the complexity of that fight,” US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Army General Martin Dempsey said on ABC’s This Week.
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