Islamic State seize Kobane security compound, target border crossing

The Islamic State militant group on Friday (10/10/2014) captured a security compound near the centre of the Syrian Kurdish enclave of Kobane and targeted the border crossing with Turkey, a monitoring group said.

The militants have gained control of 40 per cent of the town in street-to-street fighting with its hard-pressed Kurdish defenders, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Britain-based monitoring group said that the jihadists were making an "all-out" attempt to capture the town's border crossing with Turkey, its only remaining lifeline.

A local activist said that the Islamic State had moved fighters to the eastern front in Kobane in an attempt to reach the crossing with the Turkish village of Mursitpinar.

"Heavy mortar shelling has been targeting since the early hours of Friday the route leading from eastern Kobane to the Turkish border," Farhad al-Shami told dpa by phone from inside the enclave.

Three more US air raids were reported to have hit Islamic State positions around Kobane early on Friday.

The Britain-based monitoring group said the jihadists had started to use motorbikes to transport ammunition to the front lines.

The news comes a day after heavy black smoke was seen over the road leading out of the town's south-eastern outskirts, while fierce fighting raged in the eastern districts.

Also on Thursday, nine US air raids hit areas north and south of Kobane, according to the US Central Command, which leads the international air campaign against the Islamic State.

The militant group's positions around the town have been the main focus of the airstrikes since Monday, when the jihadists penetrated Kurdish defences in its eastern districts.

The Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), outgunned and outnumbered, had been calling for air support for weeks as they fought a rearguard action through the countryside around Kobane.

They also accuse Turkey of preventing them from resupplying their forces, which are reported to be running low on ammunition.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he sees the Islamic State and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) - a Turkish Kurdish rebel group closely linked to the YPG - in the same light.

Kurdish leader Salih Muslim said on Wednesday that YPG forces in the Syrian Kurdish areas of Efrin and Cezire were waiting for Turkey's go-ahead to join the resistance in Kobane. The two areas are cut off from Kobane by Islamic State-held territory on the Syrian side of the border.

Turkey's perceived inaction has prompted an angry response among its own Kurdish population, with the death toll resulting from unrest reaching 31 since Tuesday, Interior Minister Efkan Ala said.

Two police men were shot and killed Thursday night in the east Anatolian province of Bingol, while 360 people were injured, including 139 police officers, Ala said in comments carried by the Anadolu news agency.

Thirty-five of Turkey's 81 provinces have seen unrest since Tuesday.

Elsewhere, Syrian regime planes and missiles struck the town of al-Hara in southern Daraa province, killing at least 18 people including four children, the Observatory said.

Rebel forces, on the back foot in most areas of Syria, earlier this week captured a strategic hill outside al-Hara and published pictures of what they said was a joint Russian-Syrian listening station they had overrun.

Late Thursday, Syrian planes killed at least 25 people in airstrikes on the outskirts of Damascus, according to the Observatory. - Sapa-dpa