MURSITPINAR: Kurdish fighters backed by US-led air strikes battled Islamic State jihadists for control of a key Syrian town on Sunday and Turkey evacuated some border areas as mortar fire spilled over.

IS fighters seized part of a strategic hill overlooking the town of Kobane late on Saturday, a monitor said, but their progress was slowed by new strikes from the coalition of Washington and Arab allies.

A Syrian Kurdish official said IS fighters were just one kilometre from Kobane and air strikes are not enough on their own to stop them.

The dusty border town has become a crucial battleground in the international fight against IS, which sparked further outrage this weekend with the release of a video showing the beheading of Briton Alan Henning.

The video — the latest in a series of on-camera beheadings of Western hostages — included a threat to another hostage, US aid worker Peter Kassig, whose parents made an impassioned plea for his release.

Fighting raged around Kobane as the jihadists pressed their nearly three-week siege of the town, which saw them make some progress late Saturday, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group.

“IS succeeded on Saturday night in taking the southern part of the Mishtenur hill,” the Observatory’s Rami Abdel Rahman said.

If the jihadists seize the hilltop, he said, “the whole town of Kobane will be in their sights and it will be easier to take”.

Abdel Rahman said seven new coalition strikes against IS positions were carried out in the area late Saturday and the air raids were hindering the jihadist advance.

In a statement, US Central Command said the US military carried out three air strikes in Syria on Saturday, while fighter jets, bombers and helicopters were used in six assaults against IS positions in Iraq on Sunday.

The battle for Kobane continued on Sunday, with shelling echoing from the town — also known as Ain al-Arab — and warplanes roaring overhead. In a short video posted online on Saturday, Kassig’s parents pleaded for his safe release. Standing on the roof of a building overlooking the town, 55-year-old Turkish Kurd Mahmut Yildirim said the fight for Kobane was a “do or die battle”.

“This is tearing our hearts out. We cannot even get a bag of bread to our comrades fighting over there,” he said.

A mortar round hit a house Sunday on Turkish territory just a few kilometres (miles) from Kobane, wounding five people, medical sources said.

The source of the fire was unclear, but as a security precaution Turkish forces ordered the evacuation of residents from two small border villages.

The number of dead in fighting on Sunday was not known, but the Observatory, which relies on a network of local sources, said at least 33 IS fighters and 23 of the town’s Kurdish defenders were killed on Saturday.

IS began its advance on Kobane on September 16, seeking to cement its grip over a long stretch of the Syria-Turkey border.

The offensive prompted a mass exodus from the town and surrounding countryside, with some 186,000 fleeing into Turkey.

Extremist Sunni Muslim group IS has seized large parts of Syria and Iraq, declaring a “caliphate” in June and imposing its harsh interpretation of Islamic law.

The group has been accused of carrying out widespread atrocities including attacks on civilians, mass executions, abductions, torture and forcing women into slavery.

Published in Dawn, October 6th, 2014