Kurds say Kobani defence improved by coordinating targets with U.S.

 

 

(Reuters) – Kurdish forces making a stand against Islamic State fighters in Kobani say they have begun coordinating with the U.S. military to provide targets for air strikes, helping to halt the advance of the fighters through the Syrian frontline town.

A four-week siege of the mainly Kurdish town on the border with Turkey has become a focus of the U.S.-led effort to halt the militants who have seized swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq. The United Nations has warned that a massacre could take place in the town if it falls to militants, who now control nearly half of it after pushing their way inside last week.

A U.S.-led alliance has been bombing Islamic State targets in Iraq since August and extended the campaign to Syria in September. After weeks in which Kobani was rarely targeted, the town has become the main focus of strikes in recent days.

The U.S. military said it and its allies conducted 21 attacks on the militants near Kobani on Monday and Tuesday and appeared to have slowed Islamic State advances there, but cautioned that the situation was fluid.

The air strikes, visible from across the frontier in Turkey, have clearly intensified in recent days, and a monitoring group said they have become more effective, killing at least 32 Islamic State fighters in direct hits on the town this week.

Kurdish officials said the improvement in the effectiveness of air strikes in and around Kobani had come about after the main Kurdish armed group, the YPG, began giving the coordinates of Islamic State positions to the U.S.-led alliance.

“The senior people in YPG tell the coalition the location of ISIL targets and they hit accordingly,” Polat Can, a YPG spokesman, told Reuters, using an acronym for Islamic State.

“Some of (the militants) have withdrawn, but they regroup and return. But because the air strikes are working in coordination, they hit their targets well,” he said.

He did not disclose how the YPG fighters share coordinate information with the U.S. military.

Tim Ripley, a British defence expert with Jane’s Defence Weekly, said U.S. air controllers responsible for picking targets could check any information provided by YPG fighters, by also using spotters watching the fighting from across the frontier in Turkey and video from drones.

It was also possible that U.S. target spotters could be operating alongside the YPG on the ground in Kobani, Ripley said, but he thought this unlikely because of the high risk to the operation if they were injured or captured.

The Kurdish YPG have been struggling to defend Kobani, also known as Ayn al-Arab, from better armed Islamic State fighters who have used tanks, artillery and suicide truck bombs in a month-long offensive against the town at the Turkish border.

Kobani appeared close to falling a week ago as Islamic State fighters entered its eastern and southern districts and flew their black flag. As recently as Saturday, Kurdish leaders were calling for the air strikes to be stepped up. But in recent days, the air strikes have increased and the militants have not made much progress. The Kurds say they have taken back areas on the west of the town.

U.S. President Barack Obama voiced deep concern on Tuesday about the situation in Kobani as well as in Iraq’s Anbar province west of Baghdad, which U.S. troops fought to secure during the Iraq war.

The intensified air campaign around Kobani has lifted the spirits of Kurds who have maintained a vigil watching the fighting from a hilltop just over the border in Turkey.

Dozens cheered as a powerful air strike hit eastern Kobani on Wednesday afternoon, sending up a plume of smoke. One of the spectators compared Obama to a prophet.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the war using a network of sources on the ground, said one of the allied air strikes in the last day killed a group of Islamic State fighters just 50 meters (yards) from a Kurdish position.

Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Observatory, said seven Islamic State fighters had been killed in clashes with the Kurds on Wednesday, compared to five Kurdish fighters.

“(The air strikes) are more serious than before because the coordination has grown in the last six days,” Abdulrahman said.

The town’s plight has angered Kurds across the border in Turkey, who accuse the Turkish government of doing too little to help protect their kin in the battle, which has unfolded within view of Turkish tanks at the frontier.

Turkey has taken in 200,000 refugees from the area but has rejected the Syrian Kurds’ request to open a land corridor so they can resupply the besieged town with arms and fighters from other parts of northern Syria.

Washington has been cautious about predicting that its air power can make a difference, with U.S. officials saying the town could still fall. The U.S. military says its strategic objective is to degrade Islamic State’s capabilities, rather than protect particular towns in what is expected to be a long conflict.

BESIEGED

Abdulrahman Gok, a journalist inside Kobani, said the latest air strikes had nevertheless allowed the YPG to make some gains.

“Following the air strikes I went to the last safe point in eastern side of the city. Some buildings that were occupied by IS fighters were empty,” he said. “On the west, YPG destroyed a vehicle that belonged to IS and killed the militants inside.”

The Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq has sent ammunition and mortar shells to help the Kurds in Kobani. But with the town besieged from the east, south and west by Islamic State, the Turkish border to the north or an air drop would be the only way supplies can reach its defenders.

Anger at Turkish policy triggered riots among Turkey’s 15 million Kurds last week in which at least 35 people were killed.

The main Syrian Kurdish party, the PYD, has close ties to the PKK, a Turkish Kurdish party that waged a militant campaign for Kurdish rights and has threatened to abandon a peace process with Turkey in response to the Kobani crisis.

The PKK accused Turkey on Tuesday of breaking a two year ceasefire by bombing its positions. Turkey says it fired back after PKK fighters attacked an outpost.

(Additional reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Peter Graff)