The United States has admitted that air strikes alone the IS militias probably can not stop it. Yet the Kurdish fighters in Kobane seem to have the upper hand.

For three weeks, the Kurdish border town Kobane is (Arabic: Ain al-Arab) in northern Syria in the tight grip of the fighters of the “Islamic State” (IS) – despite the air raids by the US-led international coalition. After lengthy battles at the gates of the city, the battle has now shifted to the streets.

According to estimates of the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida in keeping the Kurds in Kobane the attacks of the terrorist militia still standing. The Kurdish struggle groups controlled “most of” the city, it said. In eight attacks the USA and the Jordanian Air Force, among other armored vehicles, a supply depot, a command center and barracks of the IS were destroyed near Kobane on Wednesday and in the night on Thursday.

“It remains a difficult mission,” Obama said on Wednesday after discussions with Defense Chuck Hagel, Chief of Staff Martin Dempsey and other senior military officials at the Pentagon. “I’ve said from the beginning that this is not something that can be solved overnight.” The “good news” was that there was a “broad consensus in the Middle East and among the nations of the world” that the IS-militia threatens the peace and global security.

A few hours before the Canadian Parliament had approved a military operation in the fight against Dschihadistengruppe. And served in Iraq in the night on Thursday for the first time Australian soldiers air attacks on positions of the terrorist militia.

Battle for Kobane:”Other cities are likely to fall”

The Department of Defense had, however, submitted before Obama’s visit to the sober assessment that air attacks will not be enough to prevent the imminent conquest of the northern Syrian city Kobane. “Air attacks alone will not save the city Kobane,” said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby. Other cities would probably still fall under the control of the jihadists. In the Syrian civil war currently lacks a “willing, capable, effective partner” to take on the IS-militia on the ground. “That’s just a fact,” Kirby said.

On Wednesday morning it had initially been reports that the terrorist militia had withdrawn after American air attacks from parts of the city. On Wednesday night, reported the Syrian Kurdish party PYD that it is the jihadists have succeeded in occupying several buildings on the eastern edge Kobanes. The news agencies Reuters and AFP reported that IS militias engaged with tanks in the city center before. These reports are not confirmed – the exact movements of terrorist militias thus remain largely unclear.

The Kurdish resistance fighters are inferior to the jihadists hopelessly military. In an urgent appeal, they asked the international community for the delivery of heavy weapons.

The White House is pushing to start the training and equipment for the mission as moderate Syrian rebels in Saudi Arabia. However, it will take from then on another month until the trained fighter can make the Islamists.

Following the bloody decisive battle for the strategically important Kobane million people had fled to the north on the Turkish border. The USA and the UK have under this sign now brought himself demanded by France and Turkey buffer zone for refugees in the Kurdish regions on the Turkish-Syrian border into play.

The proposal from Ankara it was “worthy to be very, very carefully examined,” said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. His British counterpart Philip Hammond said at the meeting with Kerry, the idea of ​​a buffer zone is still on the table. Shortly thereafter, however, the White House rowed back slightly: U.S. Presidential spokesman Josh Earnest said, a buffer zone should be at least “not something thought in the moment” will.

Meanwhile, a new development at the Turkish border emerged: According to a media report that Turkey wants to avoid that fighters of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) within the flow of refugees from Kobane enter the country. As “Time Online” reported, citing the Turkish authorities, in allegedly arrested at the Turkish-Syrian border more than 260 Kurds. They were being held, to verify their identity, the news portal quoted a government representative in the Turkish border town Suruc. “Whoever comes across even from the other side of the border, belongs to either the PKK or to YPG.”

While the fiercest battles focus on the Syrian-Turkish border area, the mayor of the northern Iraqi city of Erbil has drawn attention to the plight of the Kurds metropolis. He urged Germany to provide more aid. “We try to do our best, but we are on the edge of our capabilities,” said Nihad Koja Latif told Reuters in Berlin. Soon the temperature would drop in the city with some 300,000 refugees to minus ten degrees – there are also fears epidemics.

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