Kurds hold against IS attack

Source:AFP Published: 2014-10-25 13:14:19

Syrian town of Kobane under siege for over five weeks


An attack by the Islamic State (IS) group on the Syrian town of Kobane has stalled but, in neighboring Iraq, government troops are months from mounting a major fightback, US officials said.

US-led aircraft have flown nearly 6,600 sorties in the air war against IS in Iraq and Syria, and dropped more than 1,700 bombs, the US military said.

The air strikes have helped Kobane's Kurdish militia defenders hold out against the more heavily armed jihadists but have not stopped IS making new gains in parts of Iraq.

US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel acknowledged that the results of the air campaign had been "mixed" but insisted that the overall strategy was "working."

Kurdish forces in Kobane have been battling the jihadists for more than five weeks but a US official expressed confidence that the town would not fall.

"I think the Kurdish defenders ... are going to be able to hold," the official at US Central Command said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

It was a sharp change in assessment from just Sunday when US officials spoke of a "crisis" situation as Washington made its first arms drops to the town's defenders.

The battle for Kobane is a high-profile one for both the jihadists and their coalition opponents as it has been conducted under the gaze of the world's media gathered just across the border in neighboring Turkey.

Coalition aircraft carried out fresh air strikes west of the town overnight, in an area where the IS jihadists had gained some ground in recent days, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday.

"Heavy losses are being inflicted on the group every day - witnesses have told us of the bodies of its fighters lying in the streets," the Britain-based monitoring group said.

Kurds say their fighters are exhausted and anxious for promised reinforcements from Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.

The region's parliament agreed Wednesday to send Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters after Turkey said it would allow 200 of them to travel through its territory to Kobane.

Also on Friday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that 1,300 Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters would join Kurds in defending Kobane from an assault by IS jihadists. The Syrian Kurds have "accepted 1,300 people from the FSA and they are holding talks to determine the transit route," Erdogan told reporters in Estonia's capital Tallinn.

There are an estimated 2,000 Kurdish fighters battling IS jihadists for control of Kobane.



Posted in: Mid-East

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