FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

News

Syrian Kurds Battle Advancing Islamic State for Strategic Town

Kurdish militiamen and US-led airstrikes have struggled to repel an intense Islamic State offensive around Kobane, near the Turkish border.
Photo by Burhan Ozbilici/AP

Kurdish militiamen and US-led airstrikes struggled to repel an intense Islamic State offensive Sunday around the strategically valuable Syrian town of Kobane near the Turkish border.

Islamic State fighters have pounded the beleaguered town, also known as Ayn al-Arab, with mortars and shells from the city's outskirts. The militants have advanced to parts of the city in the east, west, and south, after weeks of battle with allied forces.

Advertisement

Coalition aerial bombardment of militant targets combined with heavy ground fighting to kill 16 militants and 11 Kurdish militiamen overnight, the Britain-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said Sunday.

Syrian Kurds ally with rebel groups to fight the Islamic State. Read more here.

A SOHR spokesman told AFP that, despite a fresh round of airstrikes aimed at deflecting their advances over the weekend, the extremists had overrun the southern part of a nearby hill, which provides a strategic vantage point over the town.

The skirmish also fell across territorial lines Sunday, with some artillery rounds crossing the border to land on Turkish soil, where some 180,000 Syrian refugees have fled to escape the violence raging in the predominantly ethnic Kurdish town.

Four family members, including a 5-year-old child, were wounded Sunday when a shell hit the side of their home in the village of Buyuk Kendirci, Turkey, the Associated Press reported. Turkish authorities confirmed two small towns close to the border were being evacuated Sunday as a safety precaution.

Turkish Kurds have witnessed smoke billowing from Kobane as the fighting continues, but they have been unable to cross the border to help their neighbors, friends, and family fight the insurgency.

Watch the VICE News documentary The Islamic State here.

"This is tearing our hearts out. We cannot even get a bag of bread to our comrades fighting over there," 55-year-old Turkish Kurd Mahmut Yildirim told AFP.

Advertisement

Turkish authorities used tear gas Friday to drive away a group of protestors attempting to cross the border back into Syria.

This video shows Turkish forcesfiring tear gas at Syrian Kurdish protesters at the Mursitpinar border crossing on October 4.

For weeks, Turkey has held back from supporting the US-led coalition's war against Islamic State militants, who have been waging a violent campaign since June when they began a lightening advance across massive areas of Iraq and Syria.

The Turkish parliament this week approved the country joining the campaign, but has not yet indicated whether they will provide any concrete military ground or aerial support.

The delay arises, in part, from the Syrian Kurds' complicated connections with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a separatist group that has for decades been conducting a deadly insurgency in Turkey, seeking to create an independent Kurdistan. The PKK is currently considered a terror organization by Turkey and many western countries. It has also been highly effective in fighting the Islamic State.

Kurds don't believe Turkey wants to fight the Islamic State. Read more here.

Some Turkish and Western officials have also accused the Syrian Kurds of cooperating with Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, whose army has mainly left the group alone through the country's ongoing civil war. Instead, Syria's controversial leader has concentrated military firepower on insurgents attempting to oust him.

Advertisement

Syrian Kurds have denied links with Assad.

Part of President Barack Obama's plan to "degrade and ultimately destroy" the Islamic State includes provisions to arm and train "moderate" Syrian rebel groups like the Kurdish Peshmerga, who have proved to be the most effective ground troops in Iraq and Syria so far, as coalition countries remain hesitant to put boots on the ground.

Some fear that the arms provided by the West could make their way into the hands of more extreme organizations such as the PKK for use in other battles.

Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday said he would act militarily to protect the country from the Islamic State insurgency if it spilled across the border, according to Reuters. But the leader also ruled out immediate intervention in Kobani, and compared the Syrian Kurdish forces protecting the town to the Islamist militant aggressors.

Meet the PKK 'Terrorists' Battling the Islamic State on the Frontlines of Iraq. Read more here.

Follow Liz Fields on Twitter:@lianzifields