Kurds call for support to prevent massacre by Islamic State

The main Kurdish armed group in Syria called on its kinsmen across the region to help it stop a massacre in the Syrian town of Kobani as Islamic State (IS) militants supported by tanks edged closer on its outskirts and pummelled it with artillery fire.

IS’s battlefield gains in recent months have come as Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s forces have focused on other rebel groups. Yesterday the Syrian army advanced on the city of Aleppo further west, threatening rebel supply lines in a potentially major reversal.

US-led forces have been bombing IS targets in Syria and Iraq but the action has done little to stop the group's advance in northern Syria towards the Turkish border, piling pressure on Ankara to intervene.

Canada said it would send fighter jets and other aircraft to take part in the US-led strikes on IS in Iraq for a period of up to six months, while Australian prime minister Tony Abbott yesterday said Australian special forces troops and aircraft would be deployed in Iraq to assist in the fight.

Turkish vow

Turkey said it would do what it could to prevent Kobani, a predominantly Kurdish town just over its southern border, from falling to IS. It has stopped short of committing to any direct military intervention and Syria warned on Friday against any Turkish aggression on its territory.

A statement issued by the YPG, the main Kurdish armed group, vowed unrelenting resistance to IS in its advance on Kobani. “Every street and house will be a grave for them.”

“Our call to all the young men and women of Kurdistan ... is to come to be part of this resistance.”

Esmat al-Sheikh, head of the Kurdish forces defending Kobani, said the distance between his fighters and the insurgents was now less than one kilometre.

“We are in a small, besieged area. No reinforcements reached us and the borders are closed,” he told Reuters by phone. “My expectation is for general killing, massacres and destruction.”

IS has carved out swathes of eastern Syria and western Iraq in a drive to create a caliphate between the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers. Kobani’s resistance has prevented it from consolidating territory across Syria’s north.

Residential areas struck

Fighting continued after sunset, with artillery strikes on residential areas east and southwest of Kobani’s centre. Kurds returned fire, and red tracer bullets targeting IS strongholds east of the city flew over rooftops, a Reuters correspondent on the Turkish side of the border said.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 80 shells had hit the town, known as Ayn al-Arab in Arabic, and there were heavy clashes in the east and southeast.

The fighting has driven Kurds from all over northern Syria from their homes across the border into Turkey.

"It's a dramatic humanitarian tragedy as we have all witnessed," UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said in Geneva. "It's the largest single outflow of Syrians in a few days, 160,000 people."

Advance on Aleppo

Further west, a Syrian army advance threatened to take the last main rebel supply route leading into Aleppo from the north and reverse two years of gains by Assad’s enemies.

“They are going to encircle Aleppo,” said Abu Abdo Salabman, a member of the political office of the Mujahideen Army, a rebel group viewed as part of the moderate opposition to Assad.

“They are bombing us non-stop,” said Salabman, who was not using his real name. “They are marching on us and the regime airforce is non-stop.” – Reuters