Fighting in Kobane flares as Turkish border villages evacuated

Intense fighting has flared between Kurdish groups and ISIL militants advancing on the eastern outskirts of Kobane on the second day of the Feast of Sacrifice -  the festival of sacrifice observed by Muslims all over the world.

Smoke rising from the border town has been within view of the Turkish border.  The sound of explosions were heard into Turkish border towns while a tank and a truck, loaded heavy arms, were seen deployed on a hill overlooking a Syrian border town with Turkey.

According to local sources, ISIL insurgents were battling to seize the strategic hill to advance further into the besieged Syrian border town, Kobane. They said mortar bombs struck the border town's eastern and southern outskirts and the exchange of gun fire were echoed around the crucially important hill.

While US-led international coalition was carrying out air strikes against ISIL targets in Iraq and Syria, more than 160,000 Syrian refugees have amassed along the Syrian-Turkish border since ISIL insurgents launched an offensive to seize Kobane on Sep. 15.

VIOLENCE SPILLS INTO TURKEY

The violence, centered around the Syrian border town of Kobane, spilled into Turkish territory. A mortar shell fell into a vacant field near a place which the reporters and security forces were deployed near the Syrian border in the Mürşitpınar neighborhood.  The shelling at 09:45 in the morning hours caused a stampede among the reporters on the spot for a while  but the shell did not explode.

Another mortar shell, believed to have been fired from Kobane during the clashes between Kurdish forces and ISIL members, slammed into a house near the border. When the mortar shell hit the wall of the house, four people from the same family were injured by shrapnel pieces and broken stones which ricocheted off the destroyed wall.

The Şanlıurfa governorship ordered evacuation of regions near the border with Syria which have come under mortar rain. Security forces notified the residents of the villages of Küçükkendirli and Büyükkendirli, known as Atmanek in Kurdish, that they must leave their houses soon for security reason.

The governor’s office released the decision after the mortar shell destroyed the house in Küçükkenderciler, which is just two kilometers to the Turkish-Syrian border. The residents without a place to go have been temporarily placed in guest houses of the official institutions in the region.