MURSITPINAR, Turkey: Kurdish fighters halted a thrust by Daesh militants towards the heart of the battleground Syrian town of Kobani Saturday, after the UN warned thousands of civilians risked massacre.
The pre-dawn attack came after the Daesh militants overran the Kurdish headquarters in the border town on Friday, sparking fears they would cut off the last escape route to neighbouring Turkey.
But US officials warned that while world attention is focussed on Kobani, the militants have been piling pressure on government troops in neighbouring Iraq, leaving the army in a “fragile” position in Anbar province between Baghdad and the Syrian border.
The renewed Daesh drive on the centre of Kobani sparked 90 minutes of heavy fighting with the town’s Kurdish defenders before the militants fell back, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
US-led coalition warplanes also carried out two air strikes on Daesh targets south and east of the town early Saturday, according to the Britain-based monitoring group, which has a wide network of sources inside Syria.
US-led warplanes have intensified air strikes agains Daesh, which has been attacking Kobani for three weeks, but the Pentagon has said that there are limits to what can be done without troops on the ground.
Small groups of Kurdish fighters were trying to harry the encircling militants with operations across the front line, Observatory director Rami Abdul Rahman told AFP.
UN envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura warned Friday that 12,000 or so civilians still in or near Kobani, including about 700 mainly elderly people in the town centre, “will most likely be massacred” by Daesh if the town falls.
Kobani was “literally surrounded” except for one narrow entry and exit point to the Turkish border, de Mistura said.
“We would like to appeal to the Turkish authorities in order to allow the flow of volunteers at least, and their equipment to be able to enter the city to contribute to a self-defence operation,” he said.
Twenty-one militants, including two suicide bombers, were killed along with eight Kurdish fighters in clashes in the town on Friday, the Observatory said.
Another 16 Daesh militants died in coalition air raids across the provinces of Aleppo - which includes Kobani - and Raqa, where Daesh has its main Syrian stronghold, it said.
Turkey has tightened security of its porous Syrian border after the escalating fighting in Kobani sparked the exodus of 200,000 refugees over the frontier.
Watching the events unfold from across the border, Ahmad Abu Ammar told AFP that his son was killed when Daesh attacked Kobani - three years after he lost his wife in a regime air strike in Aleppo.
“My eight-year-old son was martyred, God bless him. When the shelling became heavier we fled to Turkey and we suffered a lot to reach this place,” said the refugee, who crossed over the border two weeks ago.
Turkey has been deeply reluctant to allow weapons or Kurdish fighters to cross the border despite repeated nights of protests among its own large Kurdish minority that have left 31 people dead.
The situation is complicated by the close ties between the town’s Kurdish defenders and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency for self-rule in southeastern Turkey that Ankara is determined not to embolden.
Washington has been frustrated over Ankara’s reluctance to commit its well-equipped and well-trained forces to the coalition against Daesh but reported “progress” after two days of talks in Ankara by the coalition’s coordinator, retired US general John Allen.
Military chiefs from the 21 countries already committed to the US-led coalition are to meet in Washington next week to discuss strategy, Pentagon officials said.
US defence officials insist the primary focus of the coalition’s campaign remains Iraq, where there are capable local forces on the ground to work with, particularly Kurdish forces in the north.
