US-led strikes kill more than 500 militants in Syria

MURSITPINAR, Turkey — US-led air strikes in Syria were reported Thursday to have killed more than 500 jihadists in a month, as fighting raged in the embattled border town of Kobani.

An AFP correspondent across the frontier in Turkey reported fierce clashes in several parts of Kobani early Thursday, with heavy gun and mortar fire.

The town's Kurdish defenders have been holding out against an assault by the Islamic State (IS) militant group for more than a month, buoyed in recent days by a promise of Iraqi Kurd reinforcements and US air drops of weapons.

Fighter jets were again heard flying over Kobani on Thursday, the AFP reporter said, a month after the US-led coalition expanded its aerial campaign against IS in Iraq to Syria.

The air strikes have killed 553 people since their launch, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, including 464 IS fighters and 57 militants from Al Qaeda affiliate Al Nusra Front.

Thirty-two civilians have also been killed, including six children and five women, said the Britain-based observatory, which relies on a wide network of sources inside Syria.

Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP that the “vast majority” of jihadists killed in the strikes were not Syrians but foreign fighters who had joined IS and Nusra in the country.

Kurdish reinforcements 

After first focusing on Iraq, the coalition has dramatically expanded its strikes in Syria in recent days, including at Kobani which has become a crucial battleground in the fight against IS.

The jihadist group launched an offensive against the town last month, as it seeks to expand its control over large parts of Syria and Iraq where IS declared an Islamic “caliphate” earlier this year.

After initially losing ground, the Kobani Kurds have fought back hard, with the US military saying they had halted the IS advance and held most of the town.

But local officials say the exhausted fighters are in desperate need of relief and anxious for promised reinforcements from Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region.

Iraqi Kurdish lawmakers in their capital Erbil agreed on Wednesday to send their peshmerga fighters, after Turkey this week said it would allow them to travel to Kobani.

Mustafa Qader, responsible for the peshmerga, said a decision would be made in the coming days about how many to send.

He did not say when the forces would arrive in Syria, but added that “they will remain there until they are no longer needed”.