Kurds battle Islamist militants closing in on Syrian town

MURSITPINAR, TURKEY // Kurdish fighters backed by airstrikes fought off ISIL militants for another day on Sunday in some of the heaviest clashes for control of a strategic town in Syria.

ISIL is trying to seize the predominantly Kurdish town of Kobani and has ramped up its offensive in recent days despite being targeted by US-led coalition airstrikes aimed at halting its progress.

On Sunday, its forces battled Kurdish fighters for control of Mistanour, a strategic hill overlooking the town, and intense shelling and heavy machine-gun fire were audible around Kobani, known as Ain Al Arab in Arabic.

“The situation in Kobani has been bad in the past three days and today is the worst,” Idris Nassan said.

“The clashes are very heavy, there is bomb shelling, they are trying hard to get inside the city of Kobani. The YPG is responding strongly,” he said, referring to Kurdish forces.

He said the ISIL fighters were only one kilometre away to the south-east of the town.

Just across the border from Kobani, at least five people were wounded in a Turkish village close to the Mursitpinar crossing when a projectile from the fighting slammed into a house.

Turkish territory has repeatedly been hit by stray fire since the Kobani fighting erupted more than two weeks ago and Turkey has vowed to defend its borders. But up until now it has been reluctant to intervene.

A translator with the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) inside Kobani said ISIL forces were hitting Mistanor hill with tank and mortar fire as they tried to seize high ground from which they could dominate the streets below.

Kurdish forces had so far checked the advance, Parwer Mohammed Ali said, adding that there had been fresh airstrikes on ISIL positions overnight. “They struck three or four times in the vicinity of Mistanour hill,” he said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, said at least 11 Kurdish fighters and 16 ISIL insurgents were killed in the overnight clashes.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE and three other Arab countries have joined an American-led coalition that is conducting airstrikes against ISIL’s positions in Syria.

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah said on Sunday that religious extremism is a perversion that must be eradicated.

“Extremism, which has generated terrorism, behoves us to combine our efforts to fight it and defeat it because it has nothing to do with Islam,” the king said in an address delivered by Crown Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz, who also holds the defence portfolio.

“And we are engaged in eradicating it unwaveringly and with determination.”

Despite the military intervention, a stalemate still exists in Iraq, with territory regularly switching hands between the Iraqi government and ISIL.

Iraqi security officials and witnesses said on Sunday that ISIL fighters seized back half of Dhuluiya, 70 kilometres north of Baghdad, just a day after Iraqi military forces recaptured the town on the banks of the river Tigris.

In Syria, ISIL launched its new offensive to capture Kobani two weeks ago. It has seized hundreds of villages around the town, forcing 180,000 people to flee into Turkey.

Families have taken up residence in muddy fields, abandoned shops, parks and mosques, adding to Turkey’s mounting humanitarian crisis, which has seen refugee numbers in the whole country swell to 1.5 million since the Syrian war began.

“We fled in fear and now we are stranded here with no work and little money. We are too ashamed to ask for help,” said Anwar Shehnebi, 43, a teacher and farmer with eight children.

Speaking in the Turkish town of Suruc, 10 kilometres from the border, Mr Shehnebi said ISIL had seized vehicles from civilians, threatening the livelihood of farmers.

ISIL “has nothing to do with Islam. The Arabs don’t like them but they are scared of them”, he said.

Kurds have called for help from Turkey and more US-led raids but cooperation is complicated by Syrian Kurds’ ties to the PKK – deemed a terrorist group by many western states.

Turkish military patrols were visible west of Kobani on Sunday but there was no sign of significant troop movements. Tanks that last week were deployed along the frontier had returned to their base.

Further west in Syria, government warplanes bombed towns in the countryside north of Aleppo, which the Syrian military is seeking to recapture from a mix of insurgent groups.

Last week, the Syrian army made a new advance on Aleppo, seizing three villages north of the city and threatening rebel supply lines in a potentially major reversal.

Bashar Al Assad’s army has intensified an offensive in the heavily-populated western areas of Syria as US-led warplanes concentrate on areas in the north and east — ISIL areas that Damascus sees as less important.

Clashes took place between the Syrian army and ISIL around Kowaires military airbase in Aleppo, the Observatory said, after Syrian warplanes carried out raids around it.

In the industrial city of Sheikh Najjar, north-east of Aleppo, Islamist groups including the Al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat Al Nusra Front fought with government forces backed by pro-Assad militias and fighters from the Shiite Lebanese group Hizbollah, the Observatory said.

* Reuters with additional reporting by the Associated Press, and Agence France-Presse