Kurdish fighters battled Islamic State group fighters Friday near a Syrian Kurdish town along the border with Turkey as Turkish prime minister said his country will prevent the fall of Kobani.
The Kurdish town and its surrounding have been under attack since mid-September, with militants capturing dozens of nearby Kurdish villages. The assault, which has forced some 160,000 Syrians to flee, has left the Kurdish militiamen scrambling to repel the militants' advance into the outskirts of Kobani, also known as Ayn Arab.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors Syria's civil war, reported intense fighting Friday to the east and southeast of Kobani. The Observatory said seven Islamic State group fighters were killed in a village near Kobani.
Nasser Haj Mansour, a defense official in Syria's Kurdish region, said the Kurdish militiamen repelled the latest attack by the Islamic State group east of Kobani.
An Associated Press journalist at the Turkish border town of Suruc reported intense shelling of Kobani from the south and from the west. One tank moved on the edge of Kobani as shells landed on to its west, some 500 meters (yards) from the Turkish border.
Ismet Sheikh Hassan, the Kurdish defense minister of Kobani region, said Islamic State group fighters were trying to advance from the east, west and southeast of Kobani. He said jihadis fired rockets on the town and called on the U.S.-led coalition "to hit the tanks instead of bases."