AMMAN (Reuters) – An Islamic State suicide bomber detonated a truck laden with explosives on Monday in the besieged Kurdish town of Kobani, near the Turkish border crossing with Syria, a monitoring group and Kurdish sources said.
The attack took place in a northern district of Kobani, which has been the scene of heavy clashes between Kurdish forces and Islamic State fighters.
Idris Nassan, a Kurdish official in Kobani, said two Kurdish fighters had been wounded during the suicide bomb attack, which appeared to have been aimed at clearing a way for the IS fighters to advance further into the town.
“They (IS fighters) tried to advance towards the (border) crossing but the (Kurdish) People’s Protection Units repelled them … and they were not able to push forward,” Nassan told Reuters.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported more heavy clashes on Monday inside the city, where U.S.-led air strikes have so far failed to halt the militants’ advance.
The Observatory said there had been at least five U.S.-led strikes early on Monday, mainly targeting southern districts of Kobani, which is known as Ayn al-Arab in Arabic.
Clashes also continued
to the east, killing a dozen Islamic State fighters, the Observatory said.
The militant group wants to seize the town to consolidate a dramatic sweep across northern Iraq and Syria. The advances by the group, which espouses a rigidly conservative brand of Islam, has sent shockwaves through the Middle East.
For graphic click on http://link.reuters.com/zed23w
(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Editing by Gareth Jones)
