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Kurdish forces besiege Isis fighters in Kobani Kurdish forces besiege Isis fighters in Kobani after massacre of civilians
(about 1 hour later)
Kurdish forces have besieged Islamic State fighters who entered the northern Syrian town of Kobani, according to activists who say two days of clashes have left more than 100 civilians dead.
Related: Islamic State attacks Kobani and pro-regime troops in Syria's northRelated: Islamic State attacks Kobani and pro-regime troops in Syria's north
Mustafa Bali, a Kobani-based Kurdish activist, said small groups of jihadis were still in the town and had taken civilians hostage. He said Kurdish fighters were besieging three areas where Isis fighters had taken up positions. Kurdish forces are closing in on Islamic State fighters in the town of Kobani in Syria, after the militants slaughtered at least 154 people in one of their biggest massacres aof civilians in the country’s civil war.
Isis has suffered setbacks over the past two weeks, including the loss of the Syrian border town of Tal Abyad, one of the main points for the Isis to bring in foreign fighters and supplies. A Kurdish spokesman told the Guardian that the militants were pinned in three locations in the embattled town near the Turkish border, including a field hospital. More than 100 hostages are being held by Isis fighters or are trapped due to the crossfire.
Kobani, on Syria’s border with Turkey, had become a proud symbol of Kurdish resistance after the town and its defenders, backed by US-led coalition air strikes, repelled an extended Isis assault earlier this year. The spokesman said intermittent clashes were ongoing, but the militants were completely surrounded.
The town was besieged by Isis for months last year and into January, but Isis fighters were driven out by Kurdish militia six months ago. “Daesh (Isis) is carrying out a collective suicide attack, not to control Kobani or occupy it, but to kill the largest possible number of civilians,” said Redur Xelil, the spokesman of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the main Syrian Kurdish militia.
Kurdish officials said Isis militants infiltrated the town on Thursday wearing Syrian rebel uniforms and carrying flags of the mainstream Free Syrian Army to deceive Kobani’s Kurdish defenders. They set off three car bombs and took up positions inside Kobani, the officials said. Xelil said the number of people killed, which includes many women and children, is likely to rise as some of the dead are inside buildings inaccessible to the YPG.
Bali said: “Fighting is still ongoing in the city. It was quiet overnight but fighting resumed Friday morning.” He said Isis fighters were holding hostages in a house near Mashta Nour hospital, in another house near the town’s cultural centre, and in a home close to Mahdathe school. Isis fighters in five vehicles entered Kobani under cover of darkness in the early hours of Thursday disguised as allied militiamen, before opening fire at random in the city and detonating a car bomb at a border crossing. The terror group lost over a thousand fighters last year in an ill-fated assault on the town, an enclave on the Turkish border that emerged as a potent symbol of Kurdish defiance against Isis.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack on Kobani and its suburbs had left 120 civilians dead. Bali said more than 100 civilians were killed in Kobani, as well as 40 Isis fighters, whose bodies were still lying in the streets. He said 54 civilians had been buried in Kobani since Thursday. An alliance of the YPG and Syrian opposition fighters backed by airstrikes by the US-led coalition against the militant group has seized swathes of territory from Isis in recent days, including the strategic border town of Tal Abyad, a key lifeline of foreign fighters and supplies for the militants. Isis has also surrendered a military base once held by Bashar al-Assad’s regime and the town of Ain Issa, bringing the Kurds and their allies within 30 miles of Raqqa, the capital of Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate.
A Facebook page that posts Isis statements said a group of inghimasiyoun – a term that the group uses to refer to infiltrators who enter areas behind their enemies’ lines – entered Kobani and were fighting street battles inside the town. Monitoring groups say Isis is retrenching in Raqqa, its seat of power in Syria, bringing in reinforcements and military vehicles. The suicide attack on Kobane, which does not seriously threaten their hold on the town, appears aimed primarily to sow terror, raise the morale of its fighters and draw Kurdish forces away from the frontlines.
Bali said some Isis snipers had taken up positions on the roofs of buildings and opened fire on people in the streets. Kurdish forces are also overstretched, struggling to provide adequate protection to areas liberated from Isis.
The main Kurdish militia, the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, said it had closed the primary border crossing point between Turkey and Tal Abyad for security reasons. “I assume that the main purpose of the attack was almost certainly not to take and hold Kobane, but to throw the Kurds off balance and force them to divert forces to protect Kobane and other rear areas, so as to ease the threat they pose to Isis’s ‘capital’ in Raqqa,” said Yezid Sayegh, an expert at the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut. “Consequently, Isis didn’t need to use large numbers of fighters, just enough to do something dramatic – easily done by attacking a ‘soft’ target such as civilians.”
Elsewhere, the Observatory reported a second day of clashes between Isis fighters and Syrian government forces in the north-eastern city of Hasakah The Kurds have emerged as one of the few success stories in the coalition’s strategy to contain Isis, advancing and holding territory in the fight against the terror group. But it has also exposed the limits of the strategy, with the coalition’s refusal to arm the Kurds and provide them with war materiel that could give them the edge against Isis, flush with American munitions, vehicles and supplies seized from the Iraqi army in their conquests across the border.
, which has been jointly controlled by Kurdish fighters and the government. Xelil, the YPG spokesman, said the Kurds were working to improve security in the territories conquered from Isis.
Syria’s state news agency Sana said government warplanes attacked Isis positions nearby, killing and wounding dozens of militants. But he called on the coalition against Isis and the international community to provide the Kurds fighting the militants on the ground with weapons and equipment, saying they had not “provided a single bullet or rifle to the YPG”.
Hasakah’s governor, Mohammed Zaal al-Ali told state Syrian TV: “Warplanes and helicopters have been attacking their hideouts since the early morning.” He called on thousands of residents who had fled to safer areas to return home. “The situation today is better than yesterday,” he said.
Al-Jazeera reported on Friday that one of its cameramen, Mohammed al-Assfar, was killed while covering battles between Syrian troops and rebels in the southern city of Daraa.
Daraa was the birthplace of the uprising against the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, in March 2011.