Kurds flee town as IS wages deadly assault

Street fighting raged between Kurdish defenders and Islamic State militants who advanced into Kobani yesterday after subjecting the Syrian border town to an assault lasting almost three weeks, a monitoring group said.

Islamic State had earlier raised its black flag over a building in the outskirts and forced thousands more of Kobani’s mainly Kurdish inhabitants to flee for their lives across the nearby border into Turkey.

Islamic State fighters had penetrated about 100m into the eastern part of the town, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based group which monitors the war through its sources on the ground.

“The battle has now become street fighting, it is happening inside the town, the eastern part of the town,” the Observatory’s Rami Abdelrahman said.

Islamic State wants to take Kobani to consolidate a dramatic sweep across northern Iraq and Syria, in the name of an absolutist version of Sunni Islam, that has sent shockwaves through the Middle East. Strikes by US and Gulf state warplanes have failed to halt Islamic State’s advance on Kobani, which it has besieged from three sides and pounded with heavy artillery.

Forced to flee Kobani by the latest fighting, residents crossed into Turkey through Yumurtalik, an improvised border crossing, and ambulances with blaring sirens shuttled back and forth between the Syrian town and Turkey.

“We can hear the sound of clashes on the street”, a Kurdish Democratic Union Party translator Parwer Ali Mohamed told Reuters by phone as he fled.

“More than 2,000 people including women and children are being evacuated. Turkish police are checking our luggage now,” Ali said.

A black flag belonging to Islamic State was visible from across the Turkish border atop a four-storey building close to the scene of some of the fiercest clashes in recent days. Mortars have rained down on residential areas of Kobani, and stray fire has hit Turkish territory frequently in recent days wounding people.

Islamic State also fought intense battles over the weekend for control of Mistanour, a strategic hill overlooking Kobani. A video released by the group on Sunday appeared to show its fighters in control of radio masts on the summit, but the footage could not be independently confirmed.

Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party called for street demonstrations in Turkey to protest at Islamic State’s assault on Kobani, where the situation was “extremely critical”.

Militants also carried out two suicide attacks in the north-eastern Syrian city of Hasakah, the Observatory said, killing at least 30. “The attacks targeted checkpoints run by Kurdish fighters on the western entrance of the city. They occurred within minutes of each other,” Abdelrahman said.

Until recently, Kobani had hardly been touched by the civil war that has ravaged much of Syria, and even offered a haven for refugees from fighting elsewhere, as President Bashar al-Assad chose to let the Kurdish population have virtual autonomy.

But beheadings, mass killings and torture have spread fear of Islamic State across the region, with villages emptying at its approach and an estimated 180,000 people fleeing into Turkey from the Kobani region.

On Sunday, a female Kurdish fighter blew herself up rather than be captured by Islamic State after running out of ammunition, local sources and a monitoring group reported. Turkish hospitals have been treating a steady stream of wounded Kurdish fighters being brought across the frontier.

Witnesses who had fled Kobani said old women were being given grenades to throw, and young women with no combat experience were being armed and sent into battle.