Kobane:
Islamic State widens attack on border town
Fighting
continues to rage in the Syria-Turkey border town of Kobane, with Islamic State
(IS) militants moving into a southern district.
The
US-led coalition has carried out more air strikes to try to aid the Syrian Kurd
defenders.
However,
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned air strikes were not enough and
Kobane was "about to fall".
At
least 400 people have died in three weeks of fighting for Kobane, monitors say,
and 160,000 Syrians have fled.
If IS
captures Kobane, its jihadists will control a long stretch of the
Syrian-Turkish border.
In the
latest clashes, the UK-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights, said IS had crossed into a southern district of Kobane, taking over
many buildings.
However,
the Observatory said heavy fighting had forced IS to pull back from the eastern
districts its fighters had entered on Monday evening. It also suggested many IS
fighters had been killed in an ambush by Syrian Kurdish fighters.
The town is now
besieged on three sides. A humanitarian mission to evacuate the few thousand
civilians left in Kobane continued on Tuesday.
A Kurdish official in
Kobane, Idriss Nassan, told AFP news agency there were "lots of
clashes" on Monday night and Kurdish fighters had halted the IS advance in
the east.
But IS was "trying hard to capture the
city", he said.
Mr Nassan also
repeated the Syrian Kurds' appeal for the West to supply weapons, and called
for coalition aircraft to "strike more effectively". He said the
Kurds had not yet received "any suitable answer".
Analysis: Paul Adams,
BBC News, near the Syrian border
Turkey, a regional
superpower with significant troops and armour in the area, seems extremely
reluctant to intervene despite a government pledge to do whatever it takes to
prevent the Kurdish town of Kobane from falling.
It wants the US-led
coalition to agree on a number of things first, including setting up a no-fly
zone and a buffer zone in northern Syria and, crucially, a renewed focus on
getting rid of President Assad - which remains Turkey's principal objective.
Add to that the very
bad blood that has existed for decades between Turkey and its own Kurdish
population.
Turkey fought a bloody
war against the Turkish guerrilla group, the PKK, that helps to explain why
Ankara remains deeply reluctant to get engaged.
'Ground operation'
The US military said
the coalition had carried out five air strikes around Kobane on Monday and
Tuesday, destroying four IS armed vehicles and an "IS unit", and
damaging one IS tank.
But Mr Erdogan said on
a visit to a refugee camp for Syrians: "The problem of [IS] cannot be
solved via air bombardment. Right now, Kobane is about to fall.
"We had warned the West. We wanted three
things: no-fly zone, a secure zone parallel to that, and the training of
moderate Syrian rebels," he said.
Mr Erdogan said that "the
terror will not be over... unless we co-operate for a ground operation",
although he gave no further details.
French Foreign Minister Laurent
Fabius said he was discussing with Turkey how to stop IS in Kobane: "A
tragedy is unfolding, and we must all react. For Kobane, we are
mobilising."
Turkey
has a sizeable military force on the border but has not intervened to defend
Kobane.
In
Turkey overnight, Kurds angered at the government's reluctance to intervene clashed with police overnight in
several cities, including Istanbul.
Several
dozen Kurdish protesters also burst into the European Parliament in Brussels on
Tuesday.
Last
week, Turkey pledged to prevent Kobane from falling to the militants and its
parliament authorised military operations against militants in Iraq and Syria.
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