U.S. Hits IS with 14 Air Strikes near Syria Border Town
U.S. warplanes struck 14 times near Kobane into Thursday, hammering the Islamic State jihadists besieging the key Syrian border town, the American military said.
Central Command said the air attacks Wednesday and Thursday "successfully struck" 19 IS-held buildings, two command posts, a heavy machine gun, three sniper positions and other targets.
U.S.-led forces have now carried out more than 100 air strikes near Kobane since September 27, according to Central Command figures.
The latest bombing raids came as Kurdish forces continued to hold out against an IS offensive around Kobane, and with much of the world's media focused on the fate of the town.
U.S. military officers say the town may eventually fall but insist Kobane is not a "strategic" location and that other areas carry more importance, particularly in western Iraq and the suburbs of Baghdad.
But they privately acknowledge that intense media coverage, with television cameras across the border in Turkey relaying footage of smoke rising from the town, have turned Kobane into an important symbol.
As the tempo of air strikes dramatically increased this week, Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said on Wednesday the raids had killed "several hundred" fighters from the IS group near the town.
And a Kurdish official in Kobane said the jihadists had been rolled back from parts of the town.
Amid concern over IS gains in Anbar province in western Iraq, the United States and its allies are also striking the IS group in Iraq.
But bad weather has hampered the air campaign in the area the past few days, Kirby said.
Meanwhile, Kurdish forces held out in Kobane on Thursday as a jihadist offensive entered its second month, but the Pentagon warned U.S.-led air strikes may not prevent the Syrian border town's fall.
Kirby said the strikes had killed "several hundred" fighters with the Islamic State group and a Kurdish official inside Kobane said they had pushed the jihadists back from parts of the town.
But U.S. officials warned that after significant advances in both Syria and neighboring Iraq, the "tactical momentum" lay with IS.
While Iraqi troops prevented the jihadists from seizing a lynchpin provincial capital west of Baghdad, a senior U.S. envoy admitted IS forces had scored important advances elsewhere.
John Allen, a retired four-star general and U.S. envoy to the coalition fighting IS, said it would take time to build up local forces to defeat them.
In Kobane, Kurdish official Idris Nassen said IS had pulled back from some areas of the town but appealed for more air strikes as well as weapons to fight the jihadists.
"The international coalition has fought ISIS more effectively during the last few days," Nassen told AFP by telephone, using an alternative name for IS.
Nassen said Kurdish forces were "flushing out" IS fighters from the eastern and southeastern parts of the town, calling for more military assistance.
"We need more air strikes, as well as weaponry and ammunition to fight them on the ground," he said.
Kurdish forces have sustained heavy losses since IS launched its offensive on the Kurdish enclave around Kobane on September 16 but so too have the jihadists.
Ground fighting alone has killed more than 600 combatants, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Between September 16 and midnight (2100 GMT) on Wednesday a total of 662 people were killed in ground fighting, said the Britain-based monitoring group, which has a wide network of sources inside Syria.
They included 20 civilians, Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
IS lost 374 of its militants, while 268 people have been killed fighting on the Kurdish side, he said.
U.S. Central Command said American aircraft carried out 18 raids near Kobane over two days, hitting 16 IS-occupied buildings.
But the Pentagon spokesman warned that jihadists are pouring into the region and the town "could very well still fall".
NATO member Turkey has stationed troops, tanks and artillery just over the border -- in some cases only a few hundred meters (yards) from the fighting -- but has not intervened.
It also has yet to allow U.S. jets to mount attacks from its territory, and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said only Syrian refugees could cross into Syria to defend Kobane, rejecting Western calls to open the frontier.
President Barack Obama told military chiefs from more than 20 allies this week that they are facing a "long-term campaign" -- dubbed Operation Inherent Resolve on Wednesday -- against IS.
Obama has expressed special concern for Kobane, which has become a symbolic battleground in the fight against IS, and about halting the IS advance in Iraq's western Anbar province.
Government forces beat back an hours-long jihadist attack on the Anbar provincial capital Ramadi on Wednesday.
But Allen warned that the group has made "substantial gains" and maintained the "tactical momentum".
IS has seized control of large parts of Syria and Iraq, declaring a "caliphate" in June and imposing its harsh interpretation of Islamic sharia law.
The group has committed widespread atrocities, including mass executions, torture and forcing women and children into slavery.
The new U.N. human rights chief, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, told his first press briefing on Thursday that IS was the "antithesis of human rights".
"It kills, it tortures, it rapes," Hussein said.
"It is a diabolical, potentially genocidal movement, and the way it has spread its tentacles into other countries, employing social media and the Internet to brainwash and recruit people from across the globe, reveals it to be the product of a perverse and lethal marriage of a new form of nihilism with the digital age."
Hussein renewed calls for Iraq to accept the International Criminal Court's jurisdiction with respect to alleged rights abuses by IS.
He also promised an updated U.N. assessment of the death toll in the more than three-year-old conflict in Syria, saying that it would certainly be well over 200,000.
Source: Agence France Presse
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