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ISIS Retreats From Kobani
[TIME] The Syrian city of Kobani, just across the border from Turkey, breathed easier Thursday as U.S. coalition ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) from several neighborhoods. They've retreated some in the west but are advancing in the eastern part of the town, according to Ace last night. Speaking by phone from Kobani on Thursday, Anwar Moslem, the head of the local government, told TIME that the Peoples Protection Units (YPG), the Kurdish forces defending the enclave, were now in control of 65 to 70 percent of the besieged city. In neighborhoods in the south and east, he said, ISIS fighters were in partial retreat. In the west, they remained about three miles away. But he cautioned against premature optimism. ISIS had lost many men, he said, but they keep sending boom-mobiles, mortar shells, and yet more fighters into the area. He claimed there were more than a thousand civilians still trapped in the city center. With ISIS snipers and mortars targeting neighborhoods close to the border crossing with Turkey, it's too dangerous for the people to leave, he said. We are asking the U.S. and the U.N. to set up and operate a humanitarian corridor to Kobani. Turkish officials, however, insisted that only Kurdish and ISIS forces remained inside the city. "There are no civilians left in Kobani," Bulent Arinc, the country's deputy prime minister, told news hounds on Wednesday. "All of them are in Turkey." The Kurdish forces were bolstered by heavy air assaults from U.S. jets. In a statement posted on its website, the U.S. Central Command said that American fighter jets had conducted 14 Posted by: Fred 2014-10-17 |
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