The fiercest fighting in days shook the Syrian border town of Kobane overnight, sources inside the town and a monitoring group said yesterday, as Islamic State (IS) militants attacked Kurdish militants with mortars and car bombs.
The group — which controls much of Syria and Iraq, and was formerly named the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — fired 44 mortars at Kurdish parts of the town on Saturday, some of which fell inside Turkey, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It said four more were fired yesterday.
The month-long battle for Kobane has ebbed and flowed. Just over a week ago, Kurds warned the town would fall imminently and the US-led coalition against IS stepped up airstrikes on the group, which wants to take Kobane to consolidate its position in northern Syria.
Photo: AFP
The coalition has been bombing IS targets in Iraq since August and extended the campaign to Syria last month after the extremists made huge territorial gains.
Raids on IS holdings around Kobane have been stepped up, with the town’s fate seen as a key test for US President Barack Obama’s campaign against the militants.
NATO member Turkey, whose forces stand along the border overlooking Kobane, is a reluctant member of the coalition, insisting the allies should also confront Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to end a civil war that has killed close to 200,000 people since March 2011.
“We had the most intense clashes of days, perhaps a week last night. [IS] attacked from three different sides, including the municipality building side and the market place,” journalist Abdulrahman Gok said in Kobane. “We have had an early morning walk inside the city, and have seen lots of damaged cars on the streets and unexploded mortar shells.”
The observatory reported two IS car bombs hit Kurdish positions on Saturday evening, leading to casualties. A cloud of black smoke towered over Kobane yesterday.
A fighter from the female units of the main Syrian Kurdish militia in Kobane, YPG, said Kurdish fighters detonated the car bombs before they reached their targets.
The observatory said 70 IS fighters had been killed in the past two days, according to sources at the hospital in the nearby town of Tel Abyab, where the militants’ bodies are taken. It also said some Syrian Arab fighters from the Revolutionaries of Raqqa Brigade, which are fighting alongside the Kurds, had executed two IS captives.
“One was a child of around 15 years old. They shot them in the head,” he said.
Hundreds of thousands have fled IS’ advance. Turkey hosts about 1.5 million Syrian refugees, including almost 200,000 Kurds from Kobane. However, Ankara has refused to rearm Kurdish fighters as it views the YPG with suspicion for its links with the Kurdistan Workers Party, which has waged a 30-year armed campaign for self-rule in Turkey.
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