IS advances in Syria border town despite air strikes

AFP

Mursitpinar, Turkey

Islamist militants fighting to take a strategic Syrian border town advanced yesterday despite intensified US-led air strikes as deadly pro-Kurdish protests over the fate of its residents shook neighbouring Turkey.

As pressure grows for international action to halt the advance of the Islamic State (IS) group’s fighters, France threw its weight behind calls for a buffer zone on the Syrian-Turkish frontier.

The top US and British diplomats said they were willing to “examine” the idea of a safe haven, but the White House later denied it was considering such a move.

And the Pentagon said air strikes alone were not enough to prevent Kobane from falling.

Ultimately, “capable” ground forces—rebels in Syria and Iraqi government troops—would have to defeat the IS group, spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said.

Kobane has become a symbol of resistance against IS militants who have proclaimed an Islamic “caliphate” across swathes of Iraq and Syria, carrying out beheadings and other atrocities.

Demonstrations in Turkey over Ankara’s lack of action in support of Kobane’s predominantly Kurdish residents triggered clashes in which at least 19 people were killed.

For the first time in more than two decades, a curfew was declared in six Turkish provinces after the unrest.

In Germany, police used batons, pepper spray and water cannon as Kurds and Yazidis clashed with radical Muslims in two northern cities in violence that injured at least 23 people.

The three-week IS assault on Kobane has sent about 200,000 people flooding across the border into Turkey, but some residents said hundreds more remained two days after militants breached the town’s defences.

“There are 1,000 civilians who refuse to leave,” said Kobane activist Mustafa Ebdi.

“One of them, aged 65, said to me: “Where would we go? Dying here is better than dying on the road’.”

US and coalition aircraft targeted IS militants near the town, launching six attacks to help Kurdish fighters yesterday, the US military said.

The strikes destroyed an armoured personnel carrier, artillery and several vehicles, Central Command said.

The sounds of heavy gunfire and mortar shells were heard from the Turkish side of the border, as fierce street battles raged.

“The raids helped prevent the fall of the town, but what is needed now is weapons,” said Ebdi.

An IS fighter carried out a suicide truck bombing in east Kobane yesterday, but there was no immediate news of casualties, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Observatory directory Rami Abdel Rahman said IS forces had advanced around 100m towards the town centre yesterday evening, but that fighting had subsided slightly.

But he added that IS reinforcements were heading for Kobane from Syria’s Raqa province.

According to the Observatory, about 400 people, more than half of them militants, have been killed in and around Kobane since IS began its assault in mid-September.

Kobane, also known as Ain al-Arab, would be a major prize for the militants, giving them unbroken control of a long stretch of Syria’s border with Turkey.

France said it supported a proposal by Ankara to create a safe zone along its frontier with Syria to ensure security and to host fleeing refugees.

In a telephone conversation with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President Francois Hollande “gave his support to the idea... of creating a buffer zone between Syria and Turkey to host and protect displaced people”, the French presidency said.

In Washington, US Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters: “The buffer zone is an idea that’s out there. It’s worth examining; it’s worth looking at very, very closely.”

And British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said after meeting Kerry: “We are at the stage of exploring this.”

But White House spokesman Josh Earnest said “it’s not something that is under consideration right now.”

Ankara has come under increasing pressure to act in Kobane but its response has been complicated by concerns over emboldening Kurdish separatists, who have waged a deadly insurgency in Turkey for the past three decades.

Turkey has detained dozens of Kurds who crossed the border from Kobane on suspicion of having links with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), officials said yesterday.