{Islamic State group militants launched a fresh assault on the Syrian city of Kobane late Monday, a day after the US military began air-dropping weapons to the Kurdish fighters defending the besieged town near the Turkish border.}
The jihadists launched an assault “on all fronts of the city”, said Rami Abdel Rahman, the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, in comments to AFP.
Heavy fighting was reported in the evening as the jihadists sent in reinforcements and the shelling of Kobane’s town centre resumed.
Two suicide attacks targeted northern parts of the city earlier on Monday in an apparent bid to cut the town off from Turkey.
Outnumbered and outgunned, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters have been fighting off the IS militants besieging Kobane for more than a month.
The renewed fighting comes amid a key Turkish policy reversal, with Ankara announcing Monday that it would help Iraqi Kurdish fighters reach the Syrian town of Kobane to help fight the Islamists.
But Turkey so far has refused any land deliveries of arms to the Syrian Kurds who are linked to Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the PKK, which Turkey considers to be a terrorist group.
An influx of well-trained Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters into Kobane could be a major boost for the Syrian Kurds, who are being supported by US-led air strikes and air drops in their battle against the Islamic State group.
Washington praised the Turkish decision to help Iraq’s Kurds reinforce the strategic town.
“We welcome those statements from the foreign ministry,” State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters.
The militants also appeared to have opened up a new front in Iraq on Monday, killing 10 people in an attack on the Kurdish-controlled town of Qara Tapah and prompting half of its 9,000-strong population to flee.
The Iraqi capital Baghdad has also seen a rise in the number of bomb attacks in the past week.
US drops weapons
Three C-130 cargo aircraft carried out what the US military called “multiple” successful drops of supplies, including small arms, provided by Kurdish authorities in Iraq.
The Syrian Kurdish forces in Kobane hailed the air drops, saying it would “help greatly” in the town’s defence against the IS offensive.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said it would have been “morally very difficult to turn your back on a community fighting ISIL”, using the acronym commonly employed by US officials in referring to the IS group.
A senior administration official said the air drop was carried out in recognition of the “impressive” resistance put up by the Kurds and the losses they were inflicting on the Islamists.
The supplies were “intended to enable continued resistance against ISIL’s attempts to overtake Kobane”, said US Central Command.
A US-led coalition of Western and Arab states has carried out more than 135 air strikes against IS group targets around Kobane, but Sunday marked the first time arms had been delivered to the town’s Kurdish defenders.
“The military assistance dropped by American planes at dawn on Kobane was good and we thank America for this support,” said Redur Xelil, a spokesman for the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units.
“It will have a positive impact on military operations against Daesh and we hope for more,” he added, using the Arabic acronym for the IS group.
Xelil declined to detail what weapons were delivered but said there was “coordination” over the drop.
Islamic State fighters launched their Kobane offensive on September 16, swiftly pushing Kurds back into the town itself and sparking an exodus of some 200,000 refugees into Turkey.
But the Kurds have kept up a dogged resistance in fighting in the streets of the town, of which they control around half the territory.
{(FRANCE 24 with AFP)}
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