US and Turkey rule out ground strikes against Islamic State

Islamic State fighters seized more than a third of the Syrian border town of Kobani, a monitoring group said yesterday, as US-led air strikes failed to halt their advance and Turkish forces nearby looked on without intervening.

With Washington ruling out a ground operation in Syria, Turkey described as unrealistic any expectation that it would conduct a crossborder operation unilaterally to relieve the mainly Kurdish town.

The US military said Kurdish forces appeared to be holding out in the town, which lies within sight of Turkish territory, following fresh airstrikes in the area against a militant training camp and fighters.

However, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Islamic State, which is also known by its former acronym Isis, had pushed forward yesterday. "Isis control more than a third of Kobani – all eastern areas, a small part of the northeast and an area in the southeast," said Rami Abdulrahman, head of the observatory.

The commander of Kobani’s heavily outgunned Kurdish defenders confirmed the militants had made major gains in a three-week battle that has also led to the worst streets clashes in years between police and Kurdish protesters across the frontier in southeast Turkey.

Street battles

Militia chief Esmat al-Sheikh put the area controlled by Islamic State, which has already seized large amounts of territory in Syria and neighbouring Iraq, at about a quarter of the town.

“The clashes are ongoing – street battles,” he told Reuters by telephone from the town.

However, US secretary of state John Kerry said that while the advance of Islamic State in Kobani was "a tragedy", it would not deter the US and its allies from their long-term strategy in the region. "Kobani is a tragedy because it represents the evil of Isis," Mr Kerry told reporters in Boston, "but it is not the definition either of the strategy or the full measure of what is happening with response to Isis. We are only a few weeks into building the coalition . . .

“The primary goal of this effort has been to provide the space for Iraq to be able to get its government in place and to be begin to push back and to begin to be able to deprive them [Islamic State] of their command and control, their supply centres and their training. That is taking place.”

Massacre

Explosions rocked Kobani yesterday, with black smoke visible from the Turkish border a few kilometres away. Islamic State hoisted its black flag in the town overnight, and a stray projectile landed 3km inside Turkey.

The United Nations said only a few hundred inhabitants remained in Kobani, but the town's defenders said the battle would end in a massacre if Islamic State prevailed, giving it a strategic garrison on the Turkish border. They said the US was giving only token support through the air strikes, and Turkish army personnel in tanks were looking on but doing nothing to defend the town.

The US Central Command (Centcom) said it conducted five air strikes near Kobani yesterday and on Wednesday and that the Kurdish fighters in the area appeared to “control most of the city and are holding out against” the militants. Centcom said the strikes damaged an Islamic State training camp, destroyed one of its support buildings and two vehicles, and also hit one small and one large unit of militant fighters.

Despite Kurdish appeals for help, Turkey's foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu played down the likelihood of its forces going to Kobani's aid. "It is not realistic to expect Turkey to conduct a ground operation on its own," he told a joint news conference with Nato's Jens Stoltenberg.

“We are holding talks,” he said. “Once there is a common decision, Turkey will not hold back from playing its part.”

Ankara resents any suggestion from Washington that it is not pulling its weight but wants broader joint action that also targets the forces of Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad. “We strongly reject allegations of Turkish responsibility for the Isis advance,” said a senior Ankara government source. “Our allies, especially the US administration, dragged their feet for a very long time before deciding to take action against the catastrophic events happening in Syria,” he added. – Reuters