Islamist militants attacking a Syrian border town fought some of their heaviest battles so far with Kurdish forces yesterday, a local official said, and five people were wounded inside Turkey by a projectile fired across the frontier.
Islamic State, an al-Qaeda offshoot, is trying to seize the predominantly Kurdish border town of Kobani and has ramped up its offensive in recent days despite being targeted by US-led coalition air strikes aimed at halting its progress.
They are trying hard to get inside the town of Kobani
Yesterday its forces battled Kurdish fighters for control of Mistanour, a strategic hill overlooking the town, and intense shelling and heavy machine gun fire were audible around Kobani, known as Ayn al-Arab in Arabic.
“The situation in Kobani has been bad in the past three days and today is the worst,” Idris Nassan said by telephone.
“The clashes are very heavy, there is bomb shelling, they are trying hard to get inside the town of Kobani. The YPG is responding strongly,” he said, referring to Kurdish forces. He said the Islamic State fighters were only one kilometre away to the south east of the town.
Just across the border from Kobani, at least five people were wounded in a Turkish village close to the Mursitpinar crossing when a projectile from the fighting slammed into a house.
Turkish territory has repeatedly been hit by stray fire since the Kobani fighting erupted more than two weeks ago and Turkey has vowed to defend its borders. But up until now it has been reluctant to intervene against Islamic State.
Witnesses said the five victims, all from the same family, did not appear to be critically wounded. On Saturday a Turkish special forces officer was also lightly wounded by shrapnel, the media and local sources reported. A translator with the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) inside Kobani said Islamic State forces were hitting Mistanor hill with tank and mortar fire as they tried to seize high ground from which they could dominate the streets below.
Kurdish forces had so far checked the advance, Parwer Mohammed Ali said, adding that there had been fresh airstrikes on Islamic State positions overnight. “They struck three or four times in the vicinity of Mistanour hill,” he said.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, said at least 11 Kurdish fighters and 16 Islamic State insurgents were killed in the overnight clashes.
The US and its Western and Arab allies have carried out air strikes against Islamic State positions in Syria and neighbouring Iraq, where the Sunni Islamist group swept through huge areas of Sunni Muslim northern provinces in June.
Iraqi security officials and witnesses said yesterday that Islamic State fighters seized back half of Dhuluiya, 70 km north of Baghdad, just a day after Iraqi military forces recaptured the town on the banks of the river Tigris.
Despite the US-led military intervention, a military stalemate exists in Iraq, with territory regularly switching hands between the Iraqi government and Islamic State.