IS Jihadists Sustain Heavy Losses in Syria's Kobane
Jihadists from the Islamic State group battling for control of the Syrian border town Kobane have suffered some of their heaviest losses yet in 24 hours of clashes and U.S.-led strikes.
At least 50 jihadists were killed in the embattled town, in suicide bomb attacks, clashes with Kobane's Kurdish defenders and the air strikes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday.
The Britain-based monitor also reported that the U.S.-led coalition battling the IS group hit at least 30 targets in and around Raqa, the jihadists' de facto capital.
There were no immediate details of a toll in the Raqa strikes, which the Observatory said was one of the larger waves of raids by the coalition since it began its campaign in Syria in September.
The deaths in Kobane came on Saturday after IS jihadists launched an unprecedented attack against the border crossing separating the Syrian Kurdish town from Turkey.
Kurdish officials and the Observatory alleged the attack was launched from Turkish soil, a claim dismissed by the Turkey army as "lies."
The Observatory said at least five IS jihadists were killed in suicide bombings in Kobane, including two in the attacks on the border.
Another 11 were killed in clashes by the border that erupted after the double bombing.
There was no breakdown for the remaining IS toll, though the Observatory added that 11 Kurdish fighters and one Syrian rebel backing them were killed in clashes in the town.
IS began advancing on Kobane on September 16, hoping to quickly seize the small border town and secure its grip on a large stretch of the Syrian-Turkish border, followed advances it made in Iraq.
At one point, it looked set to overrun the town, but Kurdish Syrian fighters, backed by U.S.-led coalition air strikes and an influx of Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces, have held back the group.
In Raqa province, the U.S.-led coalition carried out strikes against at least 30 IS targets on the northern outskirts of Raqa city and struck Division 17, a Syrian army base jihadists captured earlier this year.
Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said the strikes had caused casualties but there was no immediate toll.
"We can't say it's the largest set of raids they have carried out, but it's been a long time since we've seen this number of targets hit," he said.
The U.S.-led coalition began carrying out air strikes against the Islamic State group on September 23, and stepped up raids in Kobane in a bid to prevent it falling to IS.
On Thursday, the coordinator of the U.S.-led coalition, said at least 600 IS fighters had been killed in air strikes and that the group had made easy targets of its fighters by pouring them into Kobane.
"ISIL has in so many ways impaled itself on Kobane," said retired U.S. general John Allen, using a variant of the name for IS.
But Syria's Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, speaking from Russia after meeting with key regime ally President Vladimir Putin, said the U.S.-led strikes were having little effect.
"Is Daesh weaker today after two months of coalition strikes? All the indicators show that it is not," he told the pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen news channel.
He said unless Turkey closed its border to jihadists, the group would be unharmed by the U.S.-led strikes.
Damascus has regularly accused Turkey of supporting "terrorism" because of its support for the Syrian opposition.
Turkey denies the allegations, but has made no secret of its backing for the opposition, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan calling for Syria's President Bashar al-Assad to step down.
Despite their differences, Erdogan is set to receive key Assad ally Putin in Ankara on Monday for talks about the conflict, which began in March 2011, and has killed nearly 200,000 people.
Turkey also hosted Pope Francis this week, who used the visit to urge protection of the Middle East's Christian population against threats by jihadists.
"The terrible situation of Christians and all those who are suffering in the Middle East calls not only for our constant prayer, but also for an appropriate response on the part of the international community," the Pope said in a joint statement with Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I.
Source: Agence France Presse
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