ISIS mounts renewed attack on Syrian town

The Islamic State is making a concerted push to take Kobani, a town on the Syrian border with Turkey.  Kurdish fighters have been defending the town with support from a US-led coalition.

Fighters from the Islamic State group launched Saturday a new offensive on the northern Syrian town of Kobani after shelling the area from their positions nearby, activists and a Kurdish official said.

Heavy fighting took place in Kobani Saturday afternoon and many mortar shells were fired into the town. Machinegun fire could be clearly heard from inside the town where black smoke was billowing.

The U.S. Central Command said an airstrike destroyed an IS artillery piece near Kobani. In the afternoon, warplanes of the U.S.-led coalition could be heard flying over Kobani.

Idriss Nassan, a senior official in Kobani, said the fighting concentrated on the southern and eastern edges of the town, also known as Ayn Arab.

"They think they can enter the city and these are just dreams," Nassan told The Associated Press by telephone adding that IS fighters have not been able to take Kobani despite more than a month of attacks.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting concentrated on the eastern side of the town, surrounded on three sides by Islamic State fighters. It added that IS fighters were spreading news in areas under their control that they will take Kobani on Saturday.

IS launched its offensive on Kobani in mid-September and captured dozens of villages before entering parts of the town. The fighting has forced 200,000 people to flee to neighboring Turkey from the fighting.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Central Command said its forces conducted more than 135 airstrikes against the militants in and around Kobani, killing hundreds of IS fighters.

The Observatory and Aleppo-based activist Ahamd al-Ahmad said that the area near the northern village of Handarat witnessed intense clashes between Syrian rebels and government forces.

Government forces are trying to cut a main road linking rebel-held neighborhoods of Aleppo, Syria's largest city, with those in the countryside, Al-Ahmad said via Skype.

The Observatory said the fighting near Handarat has left 15 soldiers and pro-government gunmen dead as well as 12 opposition fighters since the early hours of Saturday.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to ISIS mounts renewed attack on Syrian town
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2014/1025/ISIS-mounts-renewed-attack-on-Syrian-town
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe