Posted on 10/18/2014 3:23:02 AM PDT by GonzoII
Kurdish forces in the Syrian town of Kobane repulsed a new attempt by ‘Daesh’ fighters to cut off the border with Turkey on Saturday as troops battled the militants in neighbouring Iraq.
A Kurdish official reported five new US-led strikes around Kobane overnight as the coalition kept up its air support for the town's defenders.
But the US military said that while it saw some "encouraging" signs, the strikes might not prevent Kobane's fall and its priority remained the campaign against Daesh in Iraq.
Heavy mortar fire hit the Syrian side of the border crossing with Turkey which is the Kurdish fighters' sole avenue for resupply and the only escape route for remaining civilians, Kurdish official Idris Nassen told AFP.
The militants launched a fierce attack from the east towards the border gate before being pushed back, he added.
Nassen said that Daesh had taken casualties in the fighting, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said the militants had sent in reinforcements.
UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura earlier this month warned that about 12,000 civilians remain in and around Kobane and risk "massacre" if the militants cut off the border.
Kobane district chief Anwar Muslim said Friday that sniper and mortar fire was preventing authorities from evacuating civilians caught up in the battle.
"Their situation is difficult," he added.
An AFP correspondent on the Turkish side reported sporadic exchanges of fire in eastern Kobane later in the morning but said the crossing area was calm.
(Excerpt) Read more at emirates247.com ...
The PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) which has been the primary Kurdish group fighting against Turkey since the 70s is a Marxist terrorist organization.
PKK, specifically, has been influenced by soviet ideology, that much is true. But that isn’t reason to designate them a terrorist grp. The U.S. tends to designate non-nation-states as terrorists when they take up arms against a recognized nation-state to defend themselves, and when those nation-states request such a label to be assigned. Otherwise, mullahs in iran & erdogan’s turkey and SA should all be designated terrorist states based on their actions & often via terrorist proxies.
PKK is definitely a terrorist org. They have bombed civilian targets repeatedly.
I can sympathize with their goals while disagreeing strongly with their methods.
Agreed. Am also strongly against any grp or regime that is violent. I guess Turkish govt should’ve stopped killing Kurds too, before they became PKK. Not defending PKK methods, but they became an organized grp a reason. They started a peace process in 2012. Then ISIS came along and Erdogan has refused & still refuses to help the Kurds.
Equally PKK & YPG (their affiliate in Syria) were also the ones who significantly hepled Peshmerga & the Yezidis when the genocide of Yezidis in Iraq started by ISIS. A fact that was hardly publicized.
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