Kobane: Islamic State battles to encircle Syrian Kurds

Gunfire and explosions can be heard from the Syrian border town of Kobane where Islamic State fighters are trying to encircle its Kurdish defenders. The IS militants attacked western parts of the town but have yet to take the border crossing point with Turkey. The crossing point is a vital supply and exit route, correspondents say. In Iraq, officials in Anbar province made an urgent appeal for military help, saying the area could fall to IS militants “in days”. The US-led coalition is continuing air strikes against IS in both Iraq and Syria but the Kurds in Kobane say they urgently need more weapons and ammunition. The US has itself said that air strikes alone may not be able to save the town. Haze and dust As the sounds of battle continued on Saturday, haze and dust obscured Kobane, making air strikes more difficult but not impossible, the BBC’s Quentin Sommerville said in a tweet from the Syria-Turkey border. The Kurdish militiamen have pushed back the latest IS advance inside Kobane but the militants are being easily resupplied from the south and the east and are able to launch further attacks, our correspondent says. A Syrian Kurdish official told BBC Arabic that IS had carried out intensive attacks on different areas across the south-west, south-east and east of the town. Amid the sound of gunfire, black plumes of smoke could be seen rising from the south and west of the town, another foreign journalist at the scene, Derek Henry Flood, tweeted. Several hundred civilians are still believed to be in Kobane. On Friday, UN envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura warned that they would “most likely be massacred” by IS if the town fell. Ismet Sheikh Hassan, a senior member of the Kurdish forces defending Kobane, repeated those fears, telling AP news agency that air strikes had not been effective enough. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported two more air strikes on Saturday. Since the IS offensive against Kobane began in mid-September, some 500 people have been killed and up to 200,000 have fled across the border into Turkey. Mr de Mistura called on Turkey to allow Kurdish volunteers to cross into Syria with equipment “to be able to enter the city to contribute to a self-defence operation”. — BBC Online