The main Kurdish armed group in Syria late yesterday called on its kinsmen across the region to help it stop a massacre in the Syrian town of Kobani as Islamic State militants armed with tanks edged closer on its outskirts and pummelled it with artillery fire.
Islamic State’s battlefield gains in recent months have come as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have focussed on other rebel groups. Yesterday the army advanced on the city of Aleppo further west, threatening rebel supply lines in a potentially major reversal.
US-led forces have been bombing Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq but the action has done little to stop the group’s advance in northern Syria towards the Turkish border, piling pressure on Ankara to intervene.
My expectation is for general killing, massacres and destruction
Canada said it would send fighter jets and other aircraft to take part in the US-led strikes on Islamic State in Iraq for a period of up to six months.
Turkey said it would do what it could to prevent Kobani, a predominantly Kurdish town just over its southern border, from falling into Islamic State. It has stopped short of committing to any direct military intervention and Syria warned yesterday against any Turkish “aggression” on its territory.
A statement issued by the YPG, the main Kurdish armed group, vowed “never ending” resistance to Islamic State in its advance on Kobani. “Every street and house will be a grave for them. Our call to all the young men and women of Kurdistan ... is to come to be part of this resistance.”
Esmat al-Sheikh, head of the Kurdish forces defending Kobani, said the distance between his fighters and the insurgents was now less than one kilometre.
“We are in a small, besieged area. No reinforcements reached us and the borders are closed,” he told Reuters by phone. “My expectation is for general killing, massacres and destruction.”
Islamic State has carved out swathes of eastern Syria and western Iraq in a drive to create a caliphate between the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers. Kobani’s resistance has prevented it from consolidating territory across Syria’s north.
Fighting continued after the sun set, with artillery strikes on residential areas east and southwest of Kobani’s centre.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 80 shells had hit the town and there were heavy clashes in the east and southeast. The fighting has driven Kurds from their homes in northern Syria across the border into Turkey.