Turkish soldiers stood guard on
Tuesday just across the border from Kobani, Syria. Credit Sedat Suna/European
Pressphoto Agency
LONDON — Warplanes from the
American-led coalition fighting militants of the Islamic State were reported on
Tuesday to have struck targets in Syria
near the Turkish border in support of Kurdish forces locked in street fighting
with the militants.
If confirmed, the reports could
indicate an escalation in American-led efforts to help the Kurds resist, if not
repel, an onslaught by the Sunni militants whose forces control portions of
Syria and Iraq.
The latest fighting has centered on
the border town of Kobane and the region surrounding it, within full view of
Turkish forces who have massed tanks with their cannons pointing toward Syria
but who have not opened fire or otherwise intervened.
The United States Central Command
did not immediately confirm the reports from reporters close to the border. Its
most recent statement on Monday listed earlier strikes in the area surrounding
the beleaguered town, where two black flags have been raised by the attacking
militants.
News reports on Tuesday, however,
said new attacks by allied warplanes hit militant positions west of Kobane.
Reporters were said to have heard the sound of jet engines before two large
plumes of smoke rose from the area.
 |
Some background on goals, tactics and the
potential long-term threat to the United States from the militant group
known as the Islamic State.Video by Natalia V. Osipova and Christian Roman on
Publish Date September 10, 2014.
Photo by Reuters.
|
Barwar Mohammad Ali, a coordinator
with the Kurdish defenders inside Kobane town, said street fighting continued
early on Tuesday morning. While the new round of airstrikes appeared to make a
difference, he said, they were still not enough to hold off a larger and
better-armed Islamic State force.
Several airstrikes appeared to hit
the southern and eastern outskirts of Kobane overnight and Tuesday morning, he
said. “It is the first time that people have the impression that the airstrikes
are effective,” he said, referring to Kurdish fighters on the frontlines with
whom he said he was in touch. “But they need more.”
Defenders had clashed with Islamic
State militants on the eastern edge of Kobane, or Ayn al-Arab, as the town is
called in Arabic, the main settlement in a farming district of the same name.
Several dozen Islamic State fighters had been killed and 20 had been taken
prisoner, including 10 foreigners, he said.
Around 200 Kurdish civilians trying
to flee the area had crossed into Turkey, along with several journalists, the
defender said, and there were reports that they had been detained by Turkish
authorities. Tens of thousands of people have already fled the fighting around
Kobane.
The battle has coincided with
deepening concerns about the impact of Western involvement on the fate of
hostages held by the militants, who have claimed to behead four of them — two
Americans and two Britons — and to have threatened a fifth, a 26-year-old
American convert to Islam, Abdul-Rahman Kassig.
The most recent decapitation came last week when
video images by the Islamic State purported to show the death of Alan Henning,
a British cabdriver abducted last December.
Britain has committed warplanes to
attack Islamic State targets in Iraq, but it has said it will not immediately
join the United States in bombing targets in Syria.
The British authorities’ handling of
the crisis drew criticism on Tuesday from both the Henning family and from a
British former detainee at Guantánamo Bay, who was released in Britain last
week from a pretrial detention lasting seven months. He had been held on
suspicion of helping militants in Syria, but the authorities freed him
after abruptly withdrawing terrorism-related charges days before he was to
stand trial.
Reg Henning, the brother of Alan
Henning, challenged Prime Minister David
Cameron’s insistence that Britain, like the United States, would not
commit ground forces to the fight against Islamic State.
“We need to send ground forces in to
find out where these monsters are,” he said, referring to his brother’s
captors. “The sooner we do it, the sooner the killing stops,” he told the BBC.
Separately, Moazzam Begg, the former
detainee, said he had offered to intervene with fighters in Syria to secure Mr.
Henning’s release, but the authorities rejected the idea. He said he had played
a role in the past to free captives.
“I intervened by getting some other
groups who could pressurize them to release those individuals and I got them
released,” he told the BBC. “The problem is that the
government in its attempts to demonize and criminalize me simply refused to
look at anything to do with what I was about.”
The most recent decapitation came last week when
video images by the Islamic State purported to show the death of Alan Henning,
a British cabdriver abducted last December.
Britain has committed warplanes to
attack Islamic State targets in Iraq, but it has said it will not immediately
join the United States in bombing targets in Syria.
BBC News
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