BEIRUT: Kurdish fighters backed by intense US-led airstrikes pushed the Islamic State group almost entirely out of the Syrian town of Kobane on Monday, marking a major loss for extremists whose hopes for easy victory dissolved into a bloody, costly siege that seems close to ending in defeat.

Fighters raised a Kurdish flag on a hill in the border town near Turkey that once flew the Islamic State group’s black banner. It represents a key conquest both for the embattled Kurds and the US-led coalition, whose American coordinator had predicted that the Islamic State group would “impale itself” on Kobani.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and senior Kurdish official Idriss Nassan said the Islamic State group had been nearly expelled, with some sporadic fighting on the eastern edges of the town.

“The Islamic State is on the verge of defeat,” said Nassan, speaking from Turkey near the Syrian border.

“Their defences have collapsed and its fighters have fled”.

In September, Islamic State fighters began capturing some 300 Kurdish villages near Kobani and thrust into the town itself, occupying nearly half of it. Tens of thousands of refugees spilled across the border into Turkey. By October, Islamic State control of Kobani was so widespread that it even made a propaganda video from the town featuring a captive British photojournalist, John Cantlie, to convey its message that Islamic State fighters had pushed deep inside despite US-led airstrikes.

The town, whose capture would have given the jihadi group control of a border crossing with Turkey and open direct lines between its positions along the border, quickly became a centrepiece of the US-led air campaign in Syria.

US Secretary of State John Kerry declared it would be “morally very difficult” not to help Kobani. The US-led air assault began Sept 23, with Kobani the target of about a half-dozen airstrikes on average each day, and often more.

More than 80 per cent of all coalition airstrikes in Syria have been in or around the town. At one point in October, the US air dropped bundles of weapons and medical supplies for Kurdish fighters — a first in the Syrian conflict. Analysts, as well as Syrian and Kurdish activists, credit the air campaign and the arrival in October of heavily armed Kurdish peshmerga fighters from Iraq, who neutralised the Islamic State group’s artillery advantage, for bringing key areas of Kobani under Kurdish control.

Nassan said US-led coalition strikes became more intense in the past few days, helping Kurdish fighters in their final push toward Islamic State group positions on the southern and eastern edges of the town. The US Central Command said on Monday that it had carried out 17 airstrikes near Kobani over the last 24 hours that struck Islamic State group infrastructure and fighting positions.

Published in Dawn January 27th, 2015

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