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       In Kobani, Kurd Fighters Help Coordinate Airstrikes on IS Targets

   by Jamie Dettmer

   U.S.-led airstrikes killed at least 32 Islamic State fighters in direct
   hits in Kobani this week because of closer coordination with Kurdish
   forces on the ground, a monitoring group said, after bombing of the
   Syrian town intensified.

   Kurdish peshmerga fighters, who have held off Islamic State militants
   for a month, said U.S.-led coalition airstrikes are helping, but they
   also need arms and ammunition to stave off continuing assaults.

   Predictions of the imminent fall of the Syrian border town of Kobani to
   Islamic militants have come thick and fast in recent days with U.S.
   officials publicly saying Kurdish defenders can't hold out much longer.

   But despite the forecasts, the Kurds hang on and the brutal battle for
   control of the town has descended into a street-by-street,
   house-by-house brawl.

   Increase in airstrikes

   U.S. warplanes have ramped up the bite of their airstrikes on the
   jihadists, trying to take pressure off fighters from the Kurdish
   defense forces or YPG.

   This week compared to last saw many more sorties flown by the U.S.-led
   coalition with warplanes from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates
   joining in.

   Kurdish officials said the main Kurdish armed group, the YPG, was
   giving the coordinates of Islamic State fighters in Kobani to the
   U.S.-led alliance that is bombing the group in both Iraq and Syria.

   "The senior people in YPG tell the coalition the location of ISIL
   targets and they hit accordingly," Polat Can, a YPG spokesman, told
   Reuters, using an acronym for the Islamic State group.

   "Some of them (ISIL) have withdrawn, but they regroup and return. But
   because the airstrikes are working in coordination, they hit their
   targets well," Can said.

   Idriss Nassan, spokesman for the Kobani town council, told supporters
   via Skype that the coalition warplanes are helping them to keep Islamic
   militants at bay.

   "They are bombing very well in Kobani and around Kobani," Nassan said.

   Progress by militants

   But he admitted militants from the Islamic State group are making
   progress.

   "We don't have enough weaponry. We don't have effective weaponry. They
   are using tanks, they are using cannons," Nassan said.

   The Kurdish YPG have been struggling to defend Kobani, also known as
   Ayn al-Arab, from better armed Islamic State fighters, who have used
   tanks, artillery and suicide truck bombs in a monthlong offensive
   against the town at the Turkish border.

   Islamic State fighters have taken control of much of eastern and
   southern Kobani but have not made much progress this week.

   The Kurdish forces said they have taken back areas on the west of the
   town.

   U.S. officials said they carried out 21 airstrikes on Monday and
   Tuesday to try to halt the militants' advance - each airstrike can
   consist of the launching of several air-to-ground missiles and
   precision-guided bombs. Warplanes can be heard constantly flying
   overhead.

   But the U.S. cautioned the situation in Kobani remained fluid.

   Battle pattern

   The days of battle are falling into a pattern.

   The mornings start off quietly, but by lunchtime a crescendo builds of
   furious small-arms fire and airstrikes only to subside.

   Then the battle resumes in early evening as the sun begins to fall -
   the nights are full of fury, explosions and intense gunfire.

   This week Islamic State militants tried to bomb their way through
   Kurdish defenses by using suicide bombers. There have been nearly a
   dozen efforts.

   In low-lying Turkish villages and hills along a 15-kilometer stretch of
   the border facing Kobani, refugees from the town and local Kurds have
   been watching the raging battle unfold with a mixture of feelings.

   They cheer when an airstrike sends black plumes of smoke into the sky
   and crane to see where the ordnance struck. They seesaw between hope
   and despair, expressing one moment confidence the town won't fall and
   then conceding they don't know how the outgunned and outnumbered
   defenders can hold out.

   Some feel hopeless. Seventeen-year-old Golizar had just watched an
   airstrike hit close to her family's farm on the western side of the
   town - it may have hit the property.

   "You see that your home is gone and you can't [do] anything for her,
   for it," Golizar says sadly.

   The Islamic State group, an al-Qaida offshoot, has seized large areas
   of Iraq and Syria in an effort to reshape the Middle East according to
   its hardline vision of Islam.

   Obama concerned by advances

   U.S. President Barack Obama voiced deep concern on Tuesday about the
   situation in Kobani as well as in Iraq's Anbar province, which U.S.
   troops fought to secure during the Iraq war and is now at risk of being
   seized by Islamic State militants.

   The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the war using a
   network of sources on the ground, said one of the allied airstrikes in
   the last day killed a group of Islamic State fighters just 50 meters
   (yards) from a Kurdish position.

   Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Observatory, said seven Islamic State
   fighters had been killed in clashes with the Kurds on Wednesday,
   compared to five Kurdish fighters.

   "(The airstrikes) are more serious than before because the coordination
   has grown in the last six days," Abdulrahman said.

   The Syrian Kurds on Saturday voiced concern that the airstrikes had
   become less effective and urged more.

   Abdulrahman Gok, a journalist inside Kobani, said the latest airstrikes
   had allowed the YPG to make some gains.

   "Following the airstrikes I went to the last safe point in eastern side
   of the city. Some buildings that were occupied by IS fighters were
   empty," he said. "On the west, YPG destroyed a vehicle that belonged to
   IS and killed the militants inside."

   Resupply efforts

   U.N. officials and Kurds have called on the Turkish government to allow
   a corridor for Kurdish volunteers to reinforce the flagging defenders.
   But the Turkish government has refused to allow fighters in, with
   officials saying they fear being drawn into the war south of their
   border.

   On Wednesday the defenders managed to take back a strategic hill from
   the militants but they say they are running low on ammunition.

   The Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq has sent ammunition
   and mortar shells to help the Kurds in Kobani, but the weapons are
   stuck in Kurdish-controlled northeastern Syria because they have no way
   to reach the town.

   Kobani is besieged from the east, south and west by Islamic State
   fighters, meaning the Turkish border or an air drop are the only way
   for them to get supplies without penetrating the Islamic State group's
   blockade.

   Some material for this report came from Reuters.
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References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/kobani-islamic-state-fighting-airstrikes-kurdish-fighters/2484354.html