Despite air strikes, ISIS continues to advance in Kobani
Someone should ask President Obama when this degrading and destroying of Islamic State forces is going to begin.
The terrorist army continues its slow advance in the Kurdish border town of Kobani, capturing the headquarters of the Kurdish miliia and threatening to cut off the town and trap its few remaining fighters and inhabitants.
Kurdish forces, who are being helped by US-led coalition strikes against IS, say they urgently need more weapons and ammunition to push back the militants' advance in the town.
The US Central Command (Centcom) said that US fighter jets alongside UAE and Saudi Arabian military aircraft carried out fresh airstrikes on Thursday and Friday around the southeast of Kobane and in Deir al-Zour, in eastern Syria, destroying several IS vehicles and training facilities.
Kurdish sources inside Kobane told the BBC that four air strikes hit the western side of the town in one half-hour period.
'No Srebrenica'
Except for one narrow entry and exit point, Mr de Mistura said Kobane was "literally surrounded" by IS, with hundreds of mainly elderly civilians still inside the city centre and another 10-13,000 gathered nearby, AFP reports.
He said the civilians would "most likely be massacred'' if the town fell to IS, warning that the UN did not want to see another Srebrenica - where thousands of Muslim men and boys were killed by Bosnian Serb forces in 1995 during the Bosnian conflict.
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"We would like to appeal to the Turkish authorities in order to allow the flow of volunteers at least, and their equipment to be able to enter the city to contribute to a self-defence operation," Mr de Mistura said, addressing reporters in Geneva on Friday.
He also urged Turkey to support the US-led coalition in carrying out air strikes on IS targets around Kobane "through whatever means from their own territory".
But the vice chairman of Turkey's governing AK party, Yasin Aktay, told the BBC on Friday that all of Kobane's civilians had left the town and were already in Turkey.
"There is no tragedy in Kobane as cried out by the terrorist PKK [Kurdistan Workers' Party]", he said. "There is a war between two terrorist groups."
That last statement shows the difficulty we're going to have going forward in fighting ISIS on the ground in Syria. Turkey's attitude toward the Kurds will not allow it to intervene on their behalf, thus short circuiting any offensive action that could be taken using our air force for close air support.
ISIS has reportedly captured a border crossing with Turkey that would prevent any remaining civilians from finding refuge. The way the Kurdish defenders are talking, they probably can't hold out much longer. If a Srebrenica-like massacre were to occur, there would be a lot of blood on the hands of our NATO allies in Ankara.
And President Obama's policy of limited air strikes would be exposed as the sham it truly is.
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