Damascus : As many as 1,500 Kurdish fighters joined their fellow Kurds in Syria’s Kobani city to fight the Islamic State (IS) radical group, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Sunday.
The 1,500 Kurdish fighters have streamed from Turkey through the borders toward Kobani since last Wednesday and all the new fighters joined the Kurdish militia called the People’s Protection Units (YPG), Xinhua quoted the observatory as saying.
The latest flow of fighters came as the IS group continues to wage intense offensives for control over Kobani, which lies along the Turkish border.
The IS has captured around 60 villages in the surroundings of Kobani, said the Observatory, adding that more than 200,000 Kurdish people have fled the city toward the Turkish borders since the IS unleashed the attack Sep 16.
Kurdish activists accused Turkey of cooperating with the IS to empty the city of its residents so that it could impose a buffer zone on the Syrian side of the borders under the pretext of helping the refugees.
The US-led anti-terror coalition struck the IS positions around Kobani last week. However, the US strikes did not stop the ferocious attacks by the IS.
Syrian Kurds, whose communities largely live in the northern parts of Syria, have reached a deadlock in their fight with the IS militants, who have repeatedly tried to storm Kurdish-dominated Syrian areas.
Syria’s Kurds account for some 15 percent of the country’s 23 million inhabitants.