MURSITPINAR, Turkey (Reuters) – Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters and moderate Syrian rebels bombarded Islamic State positions in Kobani yesterday, but it was unclear if their arrival would turn the tide in the battle for the besieged Syrian border town.
Kobani has become a symbolic test of the US-led coalition’s ability to halt the advance of Islamic State, which has poured weapons and fighters into its assault of the town that has lasted more than a month.
The battle has deflected attention from significant gains elsewhere in Syria by Islamic State, which has seized two gas fields within a week from President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in the centre of the country.
In Iraq, the group has executed more than 300 members of a Sunni tribe that dared oppose it last week, after seizing the tribe’s village in the Euphrates valley west of Baghdad. Yesterday a member of the tribe said another 36 members had been executed in the provincial capital Anbar.
For now, the eyes of the world have been on Kobani, where weeks of fighting have taken place within full view of the Turkish border, causing outrage among Kurds in Turkey who blamed their government for doing too little to help defend the town.
The arrival in Kobani of the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga and additional Syrian Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters in recent days has escalated efforts to defend the town after weeks of US-led air strikes slowed but did not reverse the Islamists’ advance.
White smoke billowed into the sky as peshmerga and FSA fighters appeared to combine forces, raining cannon and mortar fire down on Islamic State positions to the west of Kobani, a Reuters witness said.
The US military said it bombed Islamic State positions in Syria five times and in Iraq nine times on Sunday and yesterday, including near Kobani.
An estimated 150 Iraqi Kurdish fighters crossed into Kobani with arms and ammunition from Turkey late on Friday, the first time Ankara has allowed reinforcements to reach the town.
“(Their) heavy weapons have been a key reinforcement for us. At the moment they’re mostly fighting on the western front, there’s also FSA there too,” said Meryem Kobane, a commander with the YPG, the main Syrian Kurdish armed group in Kobani. She said fierce fighting was also continuing in eastern and southern parts of the city.
The peshmerga, the official security forces of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, have deployed behind Syrian Kurdish forces and are supporting them with artillery and mortar fire, according to Ersin Caksu, a journalist inside Kobani. The fiercest fighting was taking place in the south and east, areas where the reinforcements were not deployed, he said.
Despite weeks of air strikes, Islamic State has continued to inflict heavy losses on Kobani’s defenders. Late last week hospital sources in Turkey reported a jump in the number of dead and wounded Kurdish fighters being brought across the frontier.
In Iraq, Islamic State fighters have stormed through mainly Sunni Muslim cities and towns in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys north and west of Baghdad, in part with the support of many Sunni Muslims angry at perceived mistreatment by the Shi’ite-led government in Baghdad.
Washington hopes that Sunni tribes can be lured to switch sides, as they did during the US “surge” campaign against al Qaeda in 2006-2007. But so far, Sunni tribes that have dared to stand up to Islamic State have suffered brutal fates, while complaining of little support from the Baghdad government.
