IS jihadists launch new offensive on Syria’s Kobane

Islamic State group militants launched a fresh assault on the Syrian city of Kobane late Monday, a day after the US military began air-dropping weapons to the Kurdish fighters defending the besieged town near the Turkish border.



The jihadists launched an assault “on all fronts of the city”, said Rami Abdel Rahman, the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, in comments to AFP.

Heavy fighting was reported in the evening as the jihadists sent in reinforcements and the shelling of Kobane’s town centre resumed.

Two suicide attacks targeted northern parts of the city earlier on Monday in an apparent bid to cut the town off from Turkey.

Outnumbered and outgunned, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters have been fighting off the IS militants besieging Kobane for more than a month.

The renewed fighting comes amid a key Turkish policy reversal, with Ankara announcing Monday that it would help Iraqi Kurdish fighters reach the Syrian town of Kobane to help fight the Islamists.

But Turkey so far has refused any land deliveries of arms to the Syrian Kurds who are linked to Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the PKK, which Turkey considers to be a terrorist group.

An influx of well-trained Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters into Kobane could be a major boost for the Syrian Kurds, who are being supported by US-led air strikes and air drops in their battle against the Islamic State group.

Washington praised the Turkish decision to help Iraq’s Kurds reinforce the strategic town.

“We welcome those statements from the foreign ministry,” State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters.

The militants also appeared to have opened up a new front in Iraq on Monday, killing 10 people in an attack on the Kurdish-controlled town of Qara Tapah and prompting half of its 9,000-strong population to flee.

The Iraqi capital Baghdad has also seen a rise in the number of bomb attacks in the past week.

(AFP)