MURSITPINAR, Turkey: Street fighting raged between Kurdish defenders and ISIS militants who advanced into Kobani Monday after subjecting the Syrian border town to an assault lasting almost three weeks, the Observatory said.
ISIS had earlier raised its black flag over a building in the outskirts and forced thousands more of Kobani’s mainly Kurdish inhabitants to flee for their lives across the nearby border into Turkey.
ISIS fighters had penetrated about 100 meters into the eastern part of the town, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based anti-regime group which monitors the war through its sources on the ground.
The jihadists launched their latest assault on Kobani with a wave of suicide bombings Monday, Mustefa Ebdi, a Kurdish activist from the town, said on his Facebook page.
The Observatory said the ISIS militants had advanced to take parts of Maqtala al-Jadida and Kani Arabane districts, including a hospital, and fighting was now centered on an industrial zone.