Asia

Asia

Islamic State seizes large areas of Syrian town despite air strikes

10 October 2014 02:02 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Islamic State fighters seized more than a third of the Syrian border town of Kobani, a monitoring group said on Thursday, as U.S.-led air strikes failed to halt their advance and Turkish forces looked on without intervening, APA reports quoting Reuters.

With Washington ruling out a ground operation in Syria, Turkey said it was unrealistic to expect it to mount a cross-border operation alone to relieve the mainly Kurdish town.

The U.S. military said Kurdish forces appeared to be holding out in the town, which lies within sight of Turkish territory, following fresh airstrikes in the area against a militant training camp and fighters.

However, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Islamic State, still widely known by its former acronym of ISIS, 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 Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Observatory, which monitors the Syrian civil war.

The commander of Kobani's heavily outgunned Kurdish defenders confirmed that the militants had made major gains, after a three-week battle that has also caused the worst street clashes in years between Turkish police and Kurdish protesters.

Militia chief Esmat al-Sheikh put the area controlled by Islamic State, which controls large amounts of territory in Syria and neighboring Iraq, at about a quarter of the town. "The clashes are ongoing - street battles," he said by telephone from the town.

Explosions rocked Kobani throughout the day, with black smoke visible from the Turkish border a few kilometers (miles) away. Islamic State hoisted its black flag in the town overnight and a stray projectile landed 3 km (2 miles) inside Turkey.

The town's defenders say the United States is giving only token support with its air strikes, while Turkish tanks sent to the frontier look on but do nothing to defend the town, where the United Nations says only a few hundred remain. Over 180,000 people from the city and surrounding area have fled into Turkey.

U.S. Central Command said it had conducted five strikes near Kobani on Wednesday and Thursday, and that Kurdish forces still appeared to control most of the town.

The strikes damaged an Islamic State training camp and destroyed a support building, as well as hitting one small unit and one large unit of militant fighters, Centcom said.