Beirut: Kurds battling the Daesh militant group in Kobani reportedly made advances on Tuesday in the south of the flashpoint Syrian town on the border with Turkey.
Top Kurdish officials said their fighters were advancing “street by street”, voicing confidence that Daesh would soon be ejected.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights backed up the report.
“The (Kurdish) People’s Protection Units (YPG) recaptured streets and buildings in the south of Kobani, after a fierce battle against the Daesh that began yesterday (Monday) evening,” said the Britain-based Observatory.
The monitor also said the YPG and its Iraqi peshmerga backers shelled Daesh positions on Tuesday elsewhere in Kobani, which is known in Arabic as Ain Al Arab.
On Monday night, the US-led coalition that launched air strikes in Syria in September hit Daesh positions in Kobani’s southeast.
Kobani has been under Daesh siege since mid-September.
Syria’s Kurds are being backed by Iraqi Peshmerga fighters and Syrian rebels in their bid to reclaim the town from militant hands.
More than 1,000 people have been killed in the fighting for Kobani, most of them militants.
Syrian Kurdish chief Saleh Muslim said the YPG were advancing “street by street” and that they would “recapture the town in a very short time”.
And the Kurds’ top field commander in Kobani, Narin Afrin, a 40-year-old woman, said by telephone: “We have been resisting for 56 days in very difficult conditions.”
Kobani has become a symbol of resistance against militants who control swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq, committing brutal abuses against rivals and the local population.
