Islamic State insurgents tightened their grip on a Syrian border town yesterday despite coalition air strikes meant to weaken them, sending thousands more Kurdish refugees into Turkey and dragging Ankara deeper into the conflict.
Kurdish militants warned that peace talks with the Turkish state would come to an end if the Islamist insurgents were allowed to carry out a massacre in the predominantly Kurdish town of Kobani, pressuring Ankara to act.
Islamic State fighters advanced to within a few kilometres of the town on three sides, after taking control of hundreds of villages around Kobani in recent weeks, beheading civilians in a bid to terrorise their residents into submission.
In neighbouring Iraq, the insurgents have carried out mass executions, abducted women and girls as sex slaves, and used children as fighters in systematic violations that may amount to war crimes, the United Nations said.
They took control of most of the western Iraqi town of Hit early on Thursday in Anbar province, where they already control many surrounding towns, launching the assault with three suicide car bombs at its eastern entrance.
US led forces, which have been bombing Islamic State targets in Syria since last week as well as in Iraq, hit a village near Kobani on Wednesday and strikes were reported further south overnight, Kurdish sources in the town said. But they seemed to do little to stop the Islamists’ advance.
“We left because we realised it was only going to get worse,” said Leyla, a 37-year old Syrian arriving at the Yumurtalik border crossing with her six children after waiting 10 days in a field, hoping the clashes would subside.
“We will go back tomorrow if Islamic State leaves. I don’t want to be here, I had never even imagined Turkey in my dreams before this,” she said.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors Syria’s war, said Islamic State militants were clashing with Kurdish fighters hundreds of metres from Kobani, raising fears they would enter the town “at any moment.”
About 20 explosions were heard in the areas of the Tishrin dam and town of Manbij roughly 50 km (31 miles) south of Kobani overnight, resulting from missile strikes believed to be carried out by the coalition, the Observatory said earlier.
Asya Abdullah, a senior official in Syria’s dominant Kurdish political party the Democratic Union Party (PYD), said there were clashes to the east, west and south of Kobani and that Islamic State had advanced to within 2-3 km on all fronts.
