Shi'ite Muslim women beating their chests as they mourn during an Ashoura procession yesterday. Ashoura, which falls on the 10th day of the Islamic month of Muharram, commemorates the death of Imam Hussein, grandson of Prophet Mohammad, who was killed in the seventh century battle of Kerbala. Photo: Murad Sezer/Reuters

Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters and moderate Syrian rebels bombarded Islamic State positions in Kobani yesterday, but it remained unclear if their arrival would definitively turn the tide in the battle for the besieged Syrian border town.

Kobani has become a symbolic test of the US-led coalition’s ability to halt the advance of Islamic State, which has poured weapons and fighters into its bid to take the town in an assault that has lasted more than a month.

The battle has also deflected attention from significant gains elsewhere in Syria by Islamic State, which has seized two gas fields within a week from President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in the centre of the country.

The arrival in Kobani of the peshmerga and additional Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters in recent days marks an escalation in efforts to defend the town after weeks of US-led air strikes slowed but did not reverse the Islamists’ advance.

White smoke billowed into the sky as peshmerga and FSA fighters appeared to combine forces, raining cannon and mortar fire down on Islamic State positions to the west of Kobani, a Reuters witness said.

An estimated 150 Iraqi Kurdish fighters crossed into Kobani with arms and ammunition from Turkey late on Friday, the first time Ankara has allowed reinforcements to reach the town.

Heavy weapons have been a key reinforcement for us

“[Their] heavy weapons have been a key reinforcement for us. At the moment they’re mostly fighting on the western front, there’s also FSA there too,” said Meryem Kobane, a commander with the YPG, the main Syrian Kurdish armed group in Kobani. She said fierce fighting was also continuing in eastern and southern parts of the city.

The peshmerga – formally part of the Iraqi army – have deployed behind Syrian Kurdish forces and are supporting them with artillery and mortar fire, according to Ersin Caksu, a journalist inside Kobani. The fiercest fighting was taking place in the south and east, areas where the newly arrived reinforcements were not deployed, he said.

Despite weeks of air strikes, the radical Sunni group has continued to inflict heavy losses on Kobani’s defenders. Late last week hospital sources in neighbouring Turkey reported a jump in the number of Kurdish fighters being brought across the border for treatment, many of them already dead.

The fight for Kobani within sight of the Turkish frontier has heaped pressure on Ankara, which has been reluctant to intervene, accusing the town’s defenders of links with Kurdistan Workers’ Party militants, who have fought a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state.

President Tayyip Erdogan yesterday decried what he called the “psychological war” being waged by the international media against Ankara, rebuffing criticism of its Syria policy.