Islamic State fighters have seized more than a third of the Syrian border town of Kobani despite U.S.-led air strikes targeting them in and around the mainly Kurdish community, a monitoring group said on Thursday.
The commander of Kobani’s heavily outgunned Kurdish defenders said Islamic State controlled a slightly smaller area of the town, which Islamic State has besieged for three weeks. Controlling Kobani is vital to the Sunni extremist group’s plans to control northern Syria, and would serve as a conduit between their capital, Raqqa, and Syria’s largest city, Aleppo.
In Washington,
the Pentagon cautioned on Wednesday that there are limits to what the air strikes can do in Syria before Western-backed, moderate Syrian opposition forces are strong enough to repel Islamic State.
Secretary of State John Kerry offered little hope to Kobani’s defenders on Wednesday. “As horrific as it is to watch in real time what is happening in Kobani … you have to step back and understand the strategic objective,” he said.
KOBANI: WHO’S IN CONTROL?
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the country’s civil war, said Islamic State had pushed forward on Thursday. “ISIS control more than a third of Kobani. All eastern areas, a small part of the northeast and an area in the southeast,” said the Observatory’s head, Rami Abdulrahman, referring to Islamic State by an older acronym.
Esmat al-Sheik, head of the Kurdish militia forces in Kobani, said Islamic State fighters had seized about a quarter of the town in the east. “The clashes are ongoing – street battles,” he told Reuters by telephone from the town. However, he acknowledged that the militants had made major gains in the siege..
The United Nations says only a few hundred inhabitants remain in Kobani but the town’s defenders say the battle will end in a massacre if Islamic State overruns the town, giving it a strategic garrison on the Turkish border.
Kobani under siege: Islamic State controls up to a third of town - The Globe and Mail
