Three Islamic State fighters blew themselves up yesterday in Kobani near the Turkish border with Syria, a monitoring group said, with the hardline militants making slight advances inside the besieged Kurdish town.
In one of the attacks an IS fighter detonated a truck laden with explosives in a northern district of Kobani, which has been the scene of heavy clashes between Kurdish forces and Islamic State fighters, Kurdish sources said.
IS fighter detonated truck laden with explosives in northern district of Kobani
Idris Nassan, a Kurdish official in Kobani, said two Kurdish fighters had been wounded during the suicide attack.
“They tried to advance towards the border crossing, but the Kurdish People’s Protection Units repelled them... and they were not able to push forward,” Nassan told Reuters.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported more heavy fighting yesterday inside the city, where US-led air strikes have so far failed to halt the militants’ advance.
Rami Abderahman of the Observatory said one of the suicide attacks targeted a bus station in the northwest of Kobani and that the group had taken around 50 per cent of the town.
“They now control the cultural centre, which means they have advanced further inside the town,” he said.
The Observatory said there had been at least five US-led air strikes early yesterday, mainly targeting southern districts of Kobani, which is known as Ayn al-Arab in Arabic.
Clashes also continued to the east, killing a dozen Islamic State fighters, the Observatory said.
The militant group wants to seize the town to consolidate a dramatic sweep across northern Iraq and Syria. The advances by the group, which espouses a rigidly conservative brand of Islam, has sent shockwaves through the Middle East.
Meanwhile late on Sunday US Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States was deeply concerned about what he called the “tragedy” in the Syrian town of Kobani, where Islamic State fighters have been tightening their grip.
Speaking at a conference in Cairo on the rebuilding of Gaza, Kerry said it would take time to bring a coalition fully together to confront the militants and said the focus must first be on Iraq while degrading Islamic State in Syria.
“Obviously we are all very concerned about the reports of gains in Kobani and we’re closely monitoring the situation. In fact, we’re not just monitoring it, we’ve been deeply engaged with strikes in the last days and today there were more strikes,” said Kerry.
“There was news today that they are continuing to hold it down, it has not been taken in completion, parts of it have.”
A group that monitors the Syrian civil war said the Kurdish forces faced inevitable defeat in Kobani if Turkey did not open its border to let through arms – something Ankara has so far appeared reluctant to do. Kerry said more than 60 partners have committed to joining the US effort to defeat Islamic State.