Just How Important Is The Battle For Kobane?

Kurds battling Islamic State militants for control of Kobani fear the extremist group may have used an unidentified chemical weapon, according to officials and one of the few doctors still working in the besieged Syrian town. Over the weekend the SRF lost its largest stronghold near the northern city of Idlib to the Nusra Front. Nusra is Al Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, while the SRF has been groomed in recent months as a ground force to compliment U.S.-led airstrikes. The SRF has received heavy artillery from U.S. forces, including tank busting missiles that are highly coveted by rebels facing the Islamic State group. SOHR has also documented the death of 1917 individuals held in Assad's prisons, mainly from torture, from the beginning of 2014 until October 31st. Some families have had the bodies returned - some have just been handed death certificates without explanation. Apparently a new gate was opened in east Kobane for the Peshmerga to enter to avoid the likely attacks on the convoy if it had entered through the main border crossing. A little to the east of Mount Sinjar, Peshmerga forces at the weekend regained control of the town of Zumar near the Syria/Iraq border after a heavy battle with the Islamic State. The Kurds were supported by Coalition airstrikes, which have continued on Monday and Tuesday destroying a small IS unit, an IS fighting position, an IS vehicle and an IS logistics base around the Mosul Dam. A U.S.-led coalition carrying out air raids against ISIL has recently intensified attacks near Kobane, and the Pentagon said its warplanes made 10 strikes in the area on Oct. 29 and Oct. 30. The attack came after the IS militants overran Kurdish headquarters in the border town on Friday, sparking fears they would cut off the last escape route to neighboring Turkey for hundreds of mainly elderly civilians still in the town centre. Regarding civilians who were closer to the blast, Omar said he was treating affected patients with oxygen, the steroid cortisone and other drugs until about 2.30am, as well as fielding calls from people who did not want to leave kobane news their homes. The three most seriously injured patients, who ranged in age from 17 to over 40, stayed in the clinic overnight for observation and Omar was trying to arrange for their evacuation to Turkey for further treatment. The Kurds claimed to have pushed IS back in parts of Kobane as the coalition intensified its air strikes in recent days. But the Pentagon warned that the strikes may not prevent the town's fall even though it says several hundred jihadists have been killed. With the world's press massed just across the border in Turkey, the battle for Kobane has become a high profile one for both IS and its opponents. US-led coalition warplanes also carried out two air strikes on IS targets south and east of the town early Saturday, according to the Britain-based monitoring group, which has a wide network of kobane news sources inside Syria. Small groups of Kurdish fighters were trying to harry the encircling jihadists with operations across the front line, Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

The People's Protection Units (YPG), the main Kurdish militia in Kobane, pushed into the city on the Turkish border after clashes with the jihadists, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported. Two civilians were killed kobane news in shelling blamed on the jihadists on a refugee camp in the western sector of Kobane, the observatory said. Like the article? Subscribe to Green Left now! You can also like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Like Stalingrad, Kobane has become something of a ghost town, battered by shelling and bombing, most of its civilian population having fled. What remains behind are the determined fighters of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) — many of them women. And those fighters have now fought the fascists to a standstill. Cantlie speaks in a seemingly relaxed tone, citing recent news reports and Western officials' statements made as late as October 20.