US steps up air strikes on Islamic State in Kobani

The United States and its allies have dramatically stepped up air strikes in the past two days near the Syrian town of Kobani, where Kurdish defenders said they had given the Americans target co-ordinates to try to halt an Islamic State (IS) assault.

The US-led military coalition said it had bombed IS targets in and around Kobani nearly 40 times in the space of 48 hours; triple the pace of last week.

The US military believes it has killed several hundred IS fighters in air strikes close to Kobani, Rear Admiral John Kirby said at a news briefing in Washington.

A four-week siege of the mainly Kurdish town on the border with Turkey has become a focus of the US-led effort to halt the militants, who have seized swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq. The United Nations has warned of a massacre if the town falls to the militants, who control nearly half of it.

IS targets

The coalition has been bombing IS 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 the two 24-hour periods since Monday, the US military reported 21 and 18 strikes on militant targets in or near the town. Last week, it typically struck the area just six or seven times per day.

A monitoring group said the strikes had also become more effective, killing at least 32 fighters in direct hits this week.

Kurdish officials said the main Kurdish armed group, the YPG, had begun giving the co-ordinates of IS positions to the US-led alliance.

“The senior people in YPG tell the coalition the location of Isil targets and they hit accordingly,” YPG spokesman Polat Can said, 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 “Some of [the militants] have withdrawn, but they regroup and return.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 co-ordination, they hit their targets well,” he said.

He did not disclose how the YPG fighters were sharing the co-ordinates.

Tim Ripley, a British expert with Jane's Defence Weekly, said US air controllers responsible for picking targets could check any information provided by YPG fighters by also using spotters watching the fighting from across the border in Turkey, as well as video relayed by drones.

The YPG forces have been struggling to defend Kobani from the better-armed IS fighters who have used tanks, artillery and suicide truck bombs.

Kobani appeared close to falling a week ago as the IS entered its eastern and southern districts and raised its black flag. As recently as Saturday, Kurdish leaders were calling for the air strikes to be stepped up.

In recent days, as the air strikes have increased, the militants have made little progress. The Kurds say they have taken back areas on the west of the town.

US president Barack Obama expressed deep concern on Tuesday about the situation in Kobani as well as in Iraq's Anbar province which US troops fought to secure during the Iraq war.

Kurdish optimism

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 yesterday afternoon, sending up a plume of smoke.

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 had killed a group of fighters just 50m from a Kurdish position. Another had destroyed a two-storey building used by the militants. – (Reuters)