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Coalition Warplanes Reportedly Strike ISIS in Support of Kurds - New York Times

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Middle East |Coalition Warplanes Reportedly Strike ISIS in Support of Kurds



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The aftermath of an airstrike in the vicinity of Kobani, Syria, as a Turkish armored vehicle patrolled on the Turkey's side of the border with Syria. Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press




LONDON — Warplanes from the American-led coalition fighting militants of the Islamic State were reported on Tuesday to have struck targets in and around the Syrian town of Kobani near the Turkish border in support of Kurdish forces locked in street fighting with the militants.


If confirmed, the reports could indicate an escalation in American-led efforts to help the Kurds resist, if not repel, an onslaught by the Sunni militants whose forces control portions of Syria and Iraq.


But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey suggested Tuesday afternoon that the strikes may have come too late, telling Syrian refugees at a camp in Gaziantep Province, near the border, that Kobani was about to fall, The Associated Press reported. “There has to be cooperation with those who are fighting on the ground,” he was quoted as saying, while adding that airstrikes might not be enough.



The latest fighting is taking place in full view of Turkish forces who have massed tanks with their cannons pointing toward Syria but who have not opened fire or otherwise intervened.




Turkish soldiers stood guard on Tuesday just across the border from Kobani, Syria. Sedat Suna/European Pressphoto Agency

The United States Central Command did not immediately confirm the news about the coalition airstrikes. Its most recent statement on Monday listed earlier strikes in the area surrounding the beleaguered town, where two black flags have been raised by the attacking militants.


Reporters close to the border said on Tuesday, however, that new attacks by allied warplanes hit militant positions west of Kobani. Reporters were said to have heard the sound of jet engines before two large plumes of smoke rose from the area.


Barwar Mohammad Ali, a coordinator with the Kurdish defenders inside Kobani, said street fighting continued Tuesday morning. While the new round of airstrikes appeared to make a difference, he said, they were still not enough to hold off a larger and better-armed Islamic State force.


Several airstrikes appeared to hit the southern and eastern outskirts of Kobani overnight and on Tuesday morning, he said. “It is the first time that people have the impression that the airstrikes are effective,” he said, referring to Kurdish fighters on the front lines with whom he said he was in touch. “But they need more.”


Defenders had clashed with Islamic State militants on the eastern edge of Kobani, or Ayn al-Arab, as the town is called in Arabic, the main settlement in a farming district of the same name. Several dozen Islamic State fighters were killed and 20, including 10 foreigners, were taken prisoner, he said.


Around 200 Kurdish civilians trying to flee the area crossed into Turkey along with several journalists, Mr. Ali said, and there were reports that they had been detained by the Turkish authorities. Tens of thousands of people have already fled the fighting around Kobani.


One of the detainees, Mustafa Bali, was reached by phone in a basketball hall in a Turkish border village called Ali Kor. He said that he and about 200 other civilians crossed the border into Turkey on Monday after the Kurdish forces known as the People’s Protection Committees, or Y.P.G., urged everyone but fighters to evacuate. Buses took them to the hall, where they are still locked in, he said.


Young men in the group, which also included women and children, were interrogated and asked about Y.P.G. leaders and their relations with them.




Play Video|1:54

ISIS’ Goals and Tactics Worldwide



ISIS’ Goals and Tactics Worldwide



Some background on goals, tactics and the potential long-term threat to the United States from the militant group known as the Islamic State.


Video by Natalia V. Osipova and Christian Roman on September 10, 2014. Photo by Reuters.

“I was locked alone in a room for four hours,” said Mr. Bali, a Syrian Kurdish activist. “They checked my phone and text messages and asked me questions about specific names in the Y.P.G. in a very insulting way. They told us we will be released when they are done with our procedure, but I don’t know what kind of procedure a refugee receives.”


The battle has coincided with deepening concerns about the impact of Western involvement on the fate of hostages held by the militants, who claimed to have beheaded four of them — two Americans and two Britons — and to have threatened a fifth, a 26-year-old American convert to Islam, Abdul-Rahman Kassig.


The most recent decapitation came last week when video images by the Islamic State purported to show the death of Alan Henning, a British cabdriver abducted last December.


Britain has committed warplanes to attack Islamic State targets in Iraq, but it has said it will not immediately join the United States in bombing targets in Syria.


The British authorities’ handling of the crisis drew criticism on Tuesday from both the Henning family and a British former detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who was released in Britain last week from a pretrial detention lasting seven months. He had been held on suspicion of helping militants in Syria, but the authorities freed him after abruptly withdrawing terrorism-related charges days before he was to stand trial.


Reg Henning, the brother of Alan Henning, challenged Prime Minister David Cameron’s insistence that Britain, like the United States, would not commit ground forces to the fight against Islamic State.


In an interview with the BBC, he spoke of the need to “send ground forces in to find out where these monsters are,” referring to his brother’s captors. “The sooner we do it, the sooner the killing stops,” he said.


Separately, Moazzam Begg, the former detainee, said he had offered to intervene with fighters in Syria to secure Mr. Henning’s release, but the authorities rejected the idea. He said he had played a role in the past to free captives.


“I intervened by getting some other groups who could pressurize them to release those individuals, and I got them released,” he told the BBC. “The problem is that the government in its attempts to demonize and criminalize me simply refused to look at anything to do with what I was about.”



Alan Cowell reported from London, and Anne Barnard from Beirut, Lebanon. Karam Shoumali contributed reporting from Sanliurfa Province, Turkey.




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