Islamic State fighters have seized more than a third of the Syrian border town of Kobani despite U.S.-led air strikes targeting them in and around the mainly Kurdish community, a monitoring group said on Thursday.
The commander of Kobani's heavily outgunned Kurdish defenders said Islamic State controlled a slightly smaller area of the town, which Islamic State has besieged for three weeks. Controlling Kobani is vital to the Sunni extremist group's plans to control northern Syria, and would serve as a conduit between their capital, Raqqa, and Syria's largest city, Aleppo.
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In Washington, the Pentagon cautioned on Wednesday that there are limits to what the air strikes can do in Syria before Western-backed, moderate Syrian opposition forces are strong enough to repel Islamic State. Secretary of State John Kerry offered little hope to Kobani's defenders on Wednesday. 'As horrific as it is to watch in real time what is happening in Kobani ... you have to step back and understand the strategic objective,' he said.
(Who are Islamic State? Get caught up with The Globe's primer)
KOBANI: WHO'S IN CONTROL?
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the country's civil war, said Islamic State had pushed forward on Thursday. 'ISIS control more than a third of Kobani. All eastern areas, a small part of the northeast and an area in the southeast,' said the Observatory's head, Rami Abdulrahman, referring to Islamic State by an older acronym.
Esmat al-Sheik, head of the Kurdish militia forces in Kobani, said Islamic State fighters had seized about a quarter of the town in the east. 'The clashes are ongoing - street battles,' he told Reuters by telephone from the town. However, he acknowledged that the militants had made major gains in the siege..
The United Nations says only a few hundred inhabitants remain in Kobani but the town's defenders say the battle will end in a massacre if Islamic State overruns the town, giving it a strategic garrison on the Turkish border.
TURKEY: TENSION WITH KURDS
In Turkey, the fallout from the war in Syria and Iraq has threatened to unravel the NATO member's delicate peace process with its own Kurdish community.
Twenty-one people died in Istanbul, Ankara and the mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey on Wednesday in the clashes between security forces and Kurds demanding that the government do more to help Kobani. Following Wednesday's violence, streets have been calmer since curfews were imposed in five southeastern provinces, restrictions unseen since the 1990s when Kurdish PKK forces were fighting the Turkish military in the southeast.
There are several reasons why Turkey, which shares a 900-kilometre border with Syria, has been reluctant to intervene in Kobani:
Kurdish nationalism: Ankara has long been suspicious of any Kurdish assertiveness which puts itself in a tough position as it tries to end its own 30-year war with the outlawed PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party). The Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria annoyed Turkey last year by setting up an interim administration in northeast Syria after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad lost control of the region, and Islamic State's rise has fuelled new efforts for Kurdish autonomy in Iraq. Ankara wants Kurdish leaders to abandon their self-declared autonomy. Military strategy: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he wants the U.S.-led alliance to enforce a 'no-fly zone' to prevent Assad's air force flying over Syrian territory near the Turkish border and create a safe area for an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees in Turkey to return. NATO officials said Thursday that the no-fly-zone plan 'has not been on the table' of strategy discussions, echoing comments made by U.S. officials Wednesday. The al-Assad factor: Turkey has been unhappy with the Kurds' reluctance to join the wider opposition to al-Assad, and Ankara has made support for moderate Syrian rebels a condition for its possible military intervention. KURDS: TENSION WITH ISLAMISTS
Kurdish anger over Kobani has also revived long-standing grudges between the PKK sympathizers and Turkish Islamist groups that are linked to the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon and which now appear to be siding with Islamic State. In Diyarbakir, Turkey's biggest Kurdish city, five people were killed in clashes on Monday and Tuesday between Islamist groups and PKK supporters, a senior police officer said.
CANADA: FOREIGN FIGHTERS UNDER SCRUTINY
Seeking to cut off Islamic State's supply of recruits from abroad, RCMP and CSIS are tracking nearly 100 foreign fighters and would-be terrorists, federal officials said Wednesday.
RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson called the pace of the investigations 'quite brisk,' at a Commons public safety committee on Wednesday. He quickly added: 'It's nothing that I think that Canadians need to be alarmed about.'
The case of foreign fighters has gained new urgency since Canada approved a six-month mission against Islamic State in Iraq. Some members of the group have vowed to strike back at Canada.
Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney said Wednesday that new legislation and measure are being prepared to combat foreign fighters, including tracking Canadians who travel to and from war zones.
With reports from Daniel Leblanc and Colin Freeze
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