BEIRUT: Islamic State group jihadists battling for control of the Syrian town of Kobane have suffered some of their heaviest losses yet in 24 hours of clashes and US-led air strikes.
At least 50 jihadists were killed in the embattled border town in suicide bombings, clashes with Kobane’s Kurdish defenders and the air strikes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said yesterday. The Britain-based monitor also reported that the US-led coalition battling the IS group hit at least 30 targets in and around Raqa, the jihadists’ de facto capital.
There were no immediate details of a toll in the Raqa strikes, which the Observatory called one of the larger waves of raids by the coalition since it began its campaign in Syria in September. In southern Daraa province, regime strikes killed at least 19 civilians, among them seven women and two children. The deaths in Kobane came on Saturday after IS jihadists launched an unprecedented attack against the border crossing separating the Syrian Kurdish town from Turkey.
Kurdish officials and the Observatory alleged the attack was launched from Turkish soil, a claim dismissed by the Turkish army as “lies”. IS began advancing on Kobane on September 16, hoping to quickly seize the small border town and secure its grip on a large stretch of the Syrian-Turkish border, following advances it made in Iraq.
At one point it looked set to overrun the town, but Kurdish Syrian fighters, backed by coalition air strikes and an influx of Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces, have held back the group.
In Raqa province, the coalition carried out strikes against at least 30 IS targets on the northern outskirts of Raqa city and struck Division 17, a Syrian army base jihadists captured earlier this year.
Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said the strikes had caused casualties, but details were not available. AFP
