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Syria's Kurds celebrate after winning Kobani, but self-rule far off

07 February 2015 00:05 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Kurds are celebrating after flushing Islamic State militants out of the town of Kobani, but victory is not yet certain in their campaign to cement hard-won autonomy in northern Syria, APA reports quoting Reuters.

Hundreds of U.S.-led coalition air strikes have devastated the town, which is adrift in an Islamic State-controlled sea. Objections to autonomy from neighboring Turkey and the United States could also make it hard for them to sustain their gains.

The retaking by People's Protection Units (YPG) last week of predominantly Kurdish Kobani after a four-month siege by Islamic State was a major defeat for the Sunni fundamentalist group that controls a 20,000-square mile arc of Syria and Iraq.

For the Kurds, it is a bittersweet victory, as almost 200,000 people, almost the entire population of Kobani province, are still sheltering in Turkey.

But many were still exuberant. Dozens of men waiting at the Turkish crossing to return to Kobani late last week shouted and danced for joy, unfazed by the wrecked city looming behind them.

Most of Kobani is destroyed, with unexploded shells and twisted hunks of cars strewn along the streets.

A few solitary YPG fighters in baggy fatigues prowl the town as shelling and gunfire echo in the distance. Fighting has now moved to the dusty outskirts, for the 400 or so villages that Islamic State, or ISIS, steamrolled through in September.

"This victory is for the Syrian people, but it is a first step," said Idris Nassan, a senior official in Kobani. "We have to continue until we destroy ISIS. If they remain in Syria, Iraq or other places in the world, they will attack us again."

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war from Britain, said Islamic State persists in rural areas more than 10 km (six miles) from town.

"Islamic State has relocated some fighters from the countryside north of Aleppo to villages around Kobani," said the Observatory's Rami Abdulrahman, adding it was important to focus on Syrian government offensives across the country as the war heads into its fifth year.

Syrian air force strikes killed at least 70 people in an opposition area outside of Damascus following rocket attacks by rebels that had hit the government-controlled center of the Syrian capital, the Observatory said on Friday.

The civil war, which began as a popular uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011, has killed 200,000 people and turned 3 million more into refugees.