Islamic State Reportedly ‘Retreating’in Kobani, as U.S. Continues to Pound Targets
ISIS militants are retreating in parts of Kobani, with one Kurdish official saying that ISIS has lost control of more than 20% of the town in recent days. While Kurdish fighters took on street battles with ISIS, the U.S.-led coalition intensified its airstrikes on ISIS targets, supporting Kurdish gains.
The U.S.-led coalition nearly tripled the pace of airstrikes on Islamic State targets near the Syrian town of Kobani, striking the town nearly 40 times in two days. U.S. defense officials said hundreds of ISIS militants have been killed, Reuters reports.
The U.S. strikes on ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq now have a name: Operation Inherent Resolve.
Last week Kobani was on the verge of falling to the ISIS as it entered southern and eastern parts of Kobani, raising its flag on a hill overlooking the town. The move prompted Kurdish leaders to call in broader support from the air.
Kurdish defenders of Kobani claim they have given the U.S.-led coalition target coordinates of ISIS’s position near Kobani, according to Reuters. The Pentagon and other U.S. officials declined comment about any coordination with the main Kurdish armed group, YPG. The YPG is closely linked with another Kurdish group across the Turkish border – the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) – which is considered a terrorist group by the Turkish state.
France, the first country to join the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS in Iraq, but who is not a participant in Syrian airstrikes, has said that it will keep delivering arms to Kurds fighting ISIS in Syria.
Prominent Syrian Lawmaker Aligned with Assad Is Gunned Down in Hama
Waris al-Younes was shot dead on Tuesday night in the Syrian city of Hama, according to Syrian state news agency SANA. Reports claim that the attack was carried out by unidentified “terrorists” – terminology often used by the regime for anyone opposing its forces.
Al-Younes was a prominent Syrian lawmaker. Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP that Younes was a commander in the National Defence Force, a pro-regime militia.
The wire reports that Younes was originally from the coastal province of Tartous, a stronghold of support for President Bashar al-Assad and a bastion of the Alawite minority sect to which the embattled leader belongs.
Hama, a crucial stretch of territory in Syria’s west, is often a battleground between pro-government forces and groups including Jabhat al-Nusra and other Islamic groups. This week Syrian warplanes carried out strikes in the east of Hama province and dropped barrel bombs in the north, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Suicide bombs and gunmen have targeted key members of the Assad government since the start of the uprising, including a suicide bomb that killed three top military officials in Damascus in 2012 and an assassination attempt against Prime Minister Wael-al Halqi last April.
ISIS May Have Access to Chemical Weapons, According to Various Reports
There’s been a media storm this week over whether ISIS may now have chemical weapons, in a new threat to ISIS foes on the ground and to the U.S.-led coalition fighting the extremist group.
On Sunday a thinktank in Israel released a report saying ISIS may have captured chemical agents in Iraq during its sweep of victories in the east of the country, later using the materials to kill three Kurdish fighters in Kobani. The Middle East Review of International Affairs, affiliated with IDC Herzliya, published photographs of the bodies of those fighters. “Burns and white spots on the bodies of the dead indicated the use of chemicals, which led to death without any visible wounds or external bleeding.”
The Huffington Post summarized that report, saying that if confirmed, it would make the international fight against ISIS even more urgent, and “bolster claims that the world has not responded quickly or powerfully enough to the threat.”
On Tuesday the New York Times gave credence to those concerns, pointing to Iraq’s Muthanna State Establishment, the facility at the center of Iraq’s chemical agent production in the 1980s. That facility has been in ISIS hands since June.
“In a letter sent to the United Nations this summer, the Iraqi government said that about 2,500 corroded chemical rockets remained on the grounds,” wrote the Times.
Yesterday a former commander in the British army, Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, warned that ISIS has the capability of making battlefield dirty bombs.
“These materials are not as secure as we had been led to believe and now pose some significant threat to the coalition in Iraq fighting ISIS,” Bretton-Gordon said.
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