ISIS In Kobani And Raqqa Facing Huge Losses: Mounting Toll And Injury Comes After Kurds Stepped Up Offensive
The ISIS in Kobani is facing severe damage and losses. The Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani has become the theatre of war between the Islamic State radicals, Kurds and the U.S. led allies who are pounding the town with air strikes to retrieve the town.
According to a U.K. based monitoring group, the Islamic State fighters have faced severe reverses including hundreds of deaths and injury at the Kobani town, bordering Turkey. Highlighting the rising toll of ISIS cadres, Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that at least 50 militants had been killed in the last couple of days from suicide bombings and clashes with Kurdish fighters.
Mounting ISIS Toll
Several deaths were also caused by the air strikes by the U.S. led forces. Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the observatory said 30 air raids targeted Islamic State bases on the northern outskirts of Raqqa province and they inflicted huge damage to ISIS fighters, reported RFRL News.
The sustained air attacks and ground offensive have loosened the grip of Islamic State fighters, who took control of Raqqa last year and made it their capital. Last week, 95 people were killed and hundreds were injured when Syrian warplanes pounded Raqqa. The dead also include some civilians.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the U.S. led coalition has been able to cause some serious damage to Islamic State insurgents in Iraq and Syria. The U.S. airstrikes evidently helped the fight against ISIS in the region. John Kerry claimed that the siege of Kobani had been loosened and within Syria ISIS command facilities have been destroyed and its oil infrastructure has also been heavily damaged.
Women Fighters
But reports also suggest the most pungent attack against the ISIS has been coming from women soldiers of the Kurd forces. The Associated Press reported from Kobani that hundreds of female fighters are playing a major role in crippling the might of ISIS sunni radicals. The AP quoted the bravado of 19-year-old Pervin Kobani, the daughter of a local farmer. She had left Kobani two years ago to join the Syrian-Kurdish Women's Self Defence Force. Now, the female fighter is back in Kobani to take on ISIS in her home town.
"I didn't really have any other ambitions. I just wanted to live a free life, as a woman and I am defending the rights to live," Pervin said, explaining why she joined the YPJ, reported The Independent. In Kobani she bumped into her father, Farouk Kobani, on a street corner. He is also a fighter now. The father said he wanted his daughter to keep her focus fully on the fight against ISIS.
Kobani came under the attack of Islamic State militants in mid-September in a bid to capture the town. The Kurdish retaliation intensified in October with more fighters making up ground forces in Kobani since late October. The well-armed Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters also joined Syrian Kurds.