Beirut: Kurdish forces blocked a road Daesh militants use to resupply their forces in a Syrian town on the Turkish border, a town official and a monitoring group said on Wednesday, the first major gain against the militants after weeks of violence.
Iraqi-Kurdish peshmerga forces crossed into Kobani on Oct.
31 to help the besieged Kurdish YPG and YPJ fighters in the town. The combined forces have now cut off the road which leads south east to the village of Hilnij, the sources said.
Despite having limited strategic significance, the battle in Kobani, also known as Ain Al Arab, has become a powerful symbol in the fight against Daesh. The hardline Sunni Muslim group has captured large expanses of Iraq and Syria and declared an Islamic “caliphate”.
Idris Nassan, a local official in Kobani, said by telephone that anti-Daesh forces had taken the strategic hill of Mistanour and the road which runs along the side of the hill.
“Daesh was using this road for ammunition and fighters,” he said. He added that peshmerga forces had been focusing artillery strikes on Daesh positions on the outskirts of Kobani like Mistanour over the past week, to halt Daesh shelling on the town.
Reuters was unable to reach Daesh fighters in Kobani. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that Kurdish forces had not taken Mistanour hill but had started fighting on the road to Hilnij, preventing Daesh fighters from using it to resupply.
Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga have helped forces in Kobani take some villages around Kobani but the lines of control in the town remain the same.
The town has become a test of the US-led coalition’s ability to halt the advance of the hardline insurgents. It is one of the few areas in Syria where it can co-ordinate air strikes with operations by an effective ground force.
