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| USN F/A-18 Hornet |
US-led airstrikes in Syria were reported Thursday to have killed more than 500 jihadists in a month, as Kurdish fighters readied to reinforce the embattled border town of Kobane.
An AFP correspondent across the frontier in Turkey reported fierce clashes and fresh air raids in Kobane, with heavy gun and mortar fire rocking its western side in the evening.
The Islamic State (IS) group, which on June 29 declared a “caliphate” over territory it seized in Iraq and Syria, was on Thursday described as the world’s wealthiest “terror” group, earning $1 million a day from oil sales alone.
The battle for Kobane has become crucial for both IS and its opponents, with a senior US official this week saying that the Kurds there were inflicting heavy losses on the jihadist group.
The Kurds have been holding out against IS jihadists for more than a month, buoyed in recent days by a promise of Iraqi Kurd reinforcements and by US air drops of weapons.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Thursday that 200 Iraqi Kurd peshmerga fighters would travel through his country to join the battle in Kobane, where IS has an estimated 1,000 militants.
Warplanes were again heard flying over Kobane and at least three airstrikes were carried out Thursday, a month after the US-led coalition expanded its aerial campaign against IS in Iraq to Syria.
The airstrikes have killed 553 people since their launch, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, including 464 IS fighters and 57 militants from the al-Qaida affiliated 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. The “vast majority” of jihadists killed were foreigners.
'World's Richest Terrorists'
After first focusing on Iraq, the US-led coalition has dramatically expanded its strikes in Syria recently, including in Kobane.
The US military said in its latest update that fresh coalition raids near the town destroyed IS fighting positions, a vehicle and a jihadist command and control center.
In Iraq, airstrikes hit IS targets including fighting positions, a vehicle and a training center.
David Cohen, the US undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence who has been leading the fight against IS on the financial front, said Thursday that its “primary funding tactics enable it today to generate tens of millions of dollars per month.”
Marwan Muasher, vice president at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said IS was now “considered the world’s wealthiest and most financially sophisticated terrorist organization.”
On the ground, the jihadists made fresh advances in and around Kobane on Thursday, reportedly seizing territory in the town center and to its north.
IS had also taken control of a string of villages west of Kobane, said the Observatory, making its first gains on the ground in several days.
The jihadists and Kurds have regularly traded territory in and around Kobane, with neither side able to gain a decisive edge.
Kurdish 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 Arbil agreed Wednesday to send their peshmerga fighters, after Turkey said it would allow them to travel across its territory to Kobane.
Mustafa Qader, the Iraqi Kurdish official responsible for the peshmerga, said the fighters “will remain there until they are no longer needed”.
Mount Sinjar Besieged
In Iraq, IS fighters killed a Yazidi commander after surrounding Mount Sinjar in the country’s north, where they had trapped thousands of civilians this summer.
The civilians, mostly members of the Yazidi religious minority, eventually escaped via Syria with the help of Kurdish fighters from Iraq’s neighbor to the west, but that route has now been cut.
“The mountain is besieged” again, and IS militants are “trying to climb the mountain on foot to fight the Yazidi volunteers,” Dawud Jundi, another commander of the forces defending the area, told AFP by telephone.
The IS assault began Monday, when some 300 of the militants seized nearby villages and then turned their sights on the mountain itself.
“We don’t have anything but light weapons,” Jundi said, adding that on Mount Sinjar “there are almost 2,000 families whose situations are very bad.”
The first siege of Mount Sinjar was a key moment in the conflict with IS, with the plight of the people trapped on the mountain helping to prompt Washington to begin airstrikes against the jihadists.
The Iraqi capital Baghdad has also seen a wave of bomb attacks against Shiite targets in recent days, with IS claiming responsibility for some.
On Thursday IS jihadists gained ground west of Baghdad, further reducing the government’s shaky hold on Anbar province, a day after car bombs in the capital killed at least 28 people.
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