Will Turkey come to the rescue?
BEIRUT -- Kurdish fighters battled ISIS 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.
Esmat al-Sheik, head of the Kurdish forces defending Kobani, told the Reuters news agency the space separating ISIS from his troops was now just half a mile. "We are in a small, besieged area. No reinforcements reached us and the borders are closed. My expectation is for general killing, massacres and destruction...There is bombardment with tanks, artillery, rockets and mortars."
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, saying the town's Kurdish fighters destroyed two vehicles belonging to militants. The group said seven ISIS 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 and destroyed one tank.
The latest round of fighting came after Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told Turkey's ATV television station late Thursday that his government does not want Kobani to be captured.
Asked what will happen if Kobani falls, Davutoglu said: "We would not want Kobani to fall. We have opened our arms to our brothers who have come from Kobani. We would do whatever is necessary, our utmost to prevent Kobani's fall."
Davutoglu did not elaborate. His comments came after Turkey's parliament gave the government new powers Thursday to launch military incursions into Syria and Iraq, and to allow foreign forces to use its territory for possible operations against the Islamic State group.
When asked about Davutoglu's statement, Nawaf Khalil, a spokesman for Syria's leading Kurdish Democratic Union Party, said: "How does he want to prevent the fall of Kobani and until now Turkey has done nothing."
Khalil added that Kobani is now almost empty of civilians and that the situation around the town "is very dangerous." He said Kurdish fighters in the town "will fight until the last gunman and last gunwoman."
Turkey's private Dogan news agency released video footage showing thick dark smoke rising from the town. People on the Turkish side of the border were watching events unfold from the top of trucks.
The Observatory reported intense shelling of Kobani, saying that a volunteer fighting with the Kurdish force known as the People's Protection Unit, of YPK, was killed. It said at least 60 shells struck the town Friday.
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 ISIS 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."
The Observatory and the Local Coordination Committees, which also monitors Syria's 3-1/2-year civil war, reported several airstrikes by the coalition targeting ISIS positions in the northern provinces of Raqqa and Aleppo, as well as the eastern oil-rich region of Deir el-Zour that borders Iraq.