Kurdish defenders held off Islamic State militants in Syria’s border town of Kobani yesterday, but the fighters struck with deadly bombings in Iraq, killing dozens of Kurds in the north and assassinating a provincial police commander in the east.
The top US military officer suggested that Washington, which has ruled out joining ground combat in either Iraq or Syria, could nevertheless increase its role “advising and assisting” Iraqi troops on the ground in future.
A US-led military coalition has been bombing Islamic State fighters who hold swathes of territory in both Iraq and Syria.
In Syria, the main focus in recent days has been on the mainly Kurdish town of Kobani near the Turkish border, where Kurdish defenders have been trying to halt an advance by fighters who have driven 200,000 refugees across the border.
We are in need of fighters, in need of everything
The jihadists have laid siege to the town for nearly four weeks and fought their way into it in recent days, taking control of almost half of the town. A UN envoy has said thousands of people could be massacred if Kobani falls.
As night fell yesterday, the town centre was under heavy artillery and mortar fire, Ocalan Iso, deputy head of the Kobani defence council, said by Skype from inside the town. Heavy clashes were underway in the east and southeast, he said, with neither side gaining ground.
Idris Nassan, deputy foreign minister in the Kurdish administration for the Kobani district, said heavy fighting had begun around nightfall in the streets. Kurdish fighters had caught attackers in an ambush, he said from the town. After days of Islamic State advances, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said Kobani’s Kurdish defenders had managed to hold their ground.
The Observatory said 36 Islamic State fighters, all foreigners, were killed the previous day, while eight Kurdish fighters had died. Gunbattles were taking place yesterday near administrative buildings the jihadists had seized two days before, it said. The fighting in Kobani has taken place within view of Turkish tanks at the frontier, but Turkey has refused to intervene to help defend the city, infuriating its own 15 million-strong Kurdish minority.
Turkish Kurdish leaders have said their government’s failure to aid the defence of Kobani could destroy Turkey’s own peace process to end decades of insurgency which killed 40,000 people. Kobani’s heavily outgunned Kurdish defenders say they want Turkey to let them bring in reinforcements and weapons to fend off the Islamic State fighters, who seized heavy artillery and tanks seized from the fleeing Iraqi army.
“We want them to open the corridor so that our people can come and help us. We need many things,” Esmat Al-Sheikh, head of the Kobani defence authority, told Reuters by telephone.
“We are in need of fighters, in need of everything.”