Sources added that US Delta Force troops and the SAS were able to cut off flanking assaults by IS militants trying to encircle the town.
Glad these guys are there but their presence should not be acknowledged or advertised .
yeppers
The core of ISIS consists of vets from the campaign in Iraq. I suspect they have a considerable number of men scouring the terrain for SF scouts and spotters. My guess is that our SF guys are very, very close to the border, and they scoot across at the first sign of trouble. The Turkish tanks are there to make sure no hot pursuit operations occur.
In fact, the most straightforward way to capture Kobane under normal conditions (i.e. a non-militarized border with nothing but customs guards manning it) would be to conduct a pincer operation such that the tips of the pincers are in Turkey. The armored Turkish formations recently posted on the border have put the kibosh on that. Some of the West's loud complaints about Turkey may be just theater - a means of not giving ISIS an excuse to start blowing up large numbers of Turks in public places. Turkey's seeming impassiveness in the face of ISIS assaults on Kobane has gotten the Western public all riled up about Turkey, while Turkish diplomats acquiesce in the PR damage because the alternative might be thousands of dead Turkish civilians. It's similar to how Arab governments have criticized the campaign in Afghanistan, while secretly sending their SF personnel to help kill Taliban.