Kurdish forces battled overnight with Islamists trying to seize a hill overlooking a Syrian border town with Turkey as US-led coalition warplanes carried out raids on the militants, a Kurdish official and a monitoring group said on Sunday.
A translator with the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) inside Kobani said Islamic State forces were hitting it with tank and mortar fire as they tried to seize Mistanour hill, a landmark whose capture would give them easy access to the town.Kurdish forces had managed to stop Islamic State capturing the hill, Parwer Mohammed Ali told Reuters.‘Overnight there were new airstrikes.
They struck three or four times in the vicinity Mistanour hill,’ he added.Islamic State, a radical offshoot of al-Qaida, launched a new offensive to capture Kobani, a Kurdish town, two weeks ago as they try consolidate their hold on a stretch of territory across northern Syria and Iraq.US-led air raids on Islamic State in Syria have done little to blunt its advance on Kobani, also known as Ayn al-Arab, and the violence has driven about some 180,000 Kurds into Turkey.