Washington : US and Saudi warplanes carried out eight air strikes in Syria on Monday, mainly targeting Islamic State jihadists fighting for a key border town, the US military said.
Bombers and fighter aircraft hit IS positions in seven strikes around Kobane, the scene of heavy fighting between the jihadists and Kurdish rebels near the Turkish border, US Central Command said.
The targets included IS units, staging areas, a heavy machine gun position, and five buildings held by the jihadist group.
The IS group has poured in reinforcements to try to overcome tenacious Kurdish resistance, and the fighting has threatened to cut Kobane from the outside world. An air strike also hit an IS garrison northwest of the Syrian town of Raqa, according to the command, which oversees US military operations in the region.
Meanwhile, Kurdish fighters have advanced against the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group in the southern rim of Syria’s northern city of Kobane, killing 13 IS militants, a monitoring group said. Intense battles have continued in the southern part of Kobane, also known as Ayn al-Arab, where Kurdish fighters of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) unleashed a counter-offensive against IS positions in that part of the predominantly Kurdish town, stripping them of two sites the IS had managed to establish a foothold at, Xinhua reported citing the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).
Clashes also continued in the eastern districts of the strategic city near the border with Turkey amid slight advances of the YPG, according to the London-based group, which relies on a network of activists on the ground. As the intense clashes raged on, over 500 Kurdish families fled Kobane toward Syria’s northern province of Hasaka, the pan-Arab al-Mayadeen TV said Monday.