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 Islamic State launched an offensive to try to capture the border
town of Kobani more than a week ago, besieging it from three sides.
More than 140,000 Kurds have fled the town and surrounding villages
since last Friday, crossing into Turkey.
The Sunni insurgents appeared to have taken control of a hill from
where fighters of the YPG, the main Kurdish armed group in northern
Syria, had been attacking them in recent days, 10 km (6 miles) west
of Kobani, a Reuters correspondent said.
Booms of artillery and bursts of machinegun fire echoed across the
border, and at least two shells hit a vineyard on the Turkish side.
There were no immediate reports of casualties in Turkey and
paramilitary police arrived to inspect the site.
"We're afraid. We're taking the car and leaving today," said
vineyard owner Huseyin Turkmen, 60, as small arms fire rang out in
the Syrian hills just to the south.
Kurdish forces said on Thursday they had pushed back the advance on
Kobani, also known as Ayn al-Arab, by Islamic State fighters but
appealed for U.S.-led air strikes to target the insurgents' tanks
and heavy armaments.
"The clashes are moving between east, west and south of Kobani ...
The three sides are active," Idris Nassan, deputy foreign minister
for the Kobani canton, said by phone from the center of the town.
"They are trying hard to reach Kobani. There is resistance here by
YPG, by Kobani and some volunteers from north Kurdistan -- Turkish
Kurds -- who are coming to share in the efforts of Kobani. They have
made a strong response," he said.
Kobani's strategic location has been blocking the Islamic State
fighters from consolidating their gains in northern Syria. The group
tried to take the town in July but was repulsed by local forces
backed by Kurdish fighters from Turkey. "EVERYONE IS ARMED"
"If they did come inside Kobani, everyone here is armed, they are
armed and resisting. Even me, I am the deputy foreign minister here
in Kobani canton but I am an armed man too. I am ready to defend
Kobani," Nassan told Reuters.
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"Every girl, every young man, every man who is able to fight, to
carry a gun, they armed and they are ready to defend and fight."
Turkey has been slow to respond to calls for a coalition to fight
Islamic State in Syria, worried in part about links between Syrian
Kurds and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a militant group which
waged a three-decade campaign against the Turkish state for greater
Kurdish rights.
The PKK has called on Turkey's Kurds to join the fight to defend
Kobani and accused Ankara of supporting Islamic State. Residents in
the border area say hundreds of youths have done so, although
Turkish security forces have been trying to keep them from crossing
the frontier.
Turkey strongly denies it has given any form of support to the
Islamist militants but Western countries say its open borders during
Syria's three-year-old civil war allowed Islamic State and other
radical groups to grow in power.
The Turkish military has in the past fired back when shells from
Syria's civil war strayed into Turkish territory, and the
intensifying battle for Kobani is heightening pressure on Ankara to
take a more robust stance against the insurgents.
(Additional reporting by Sylvia Westall in Beirut; Writing by Nick
Tattersall; Editing by Andrew Roche)
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