Reuters is reporting that:
Turkey’s president said Kobani was “about to fall” after Islamic State fighters advanced into the south west of the Syrian Kurdish town, pressing home a three-week assault has cost a reported 400 lives.
The prospect that the town on the Turkish border could be captured by the militants has increased pressure on Turkey, with the strongest army in the region, to join an international coalition to fight against Islamic State.
Islamic State wants to take Kobani in order to strengthen its grip on the border area and consolidate the territorial gains it has made in Iraq and Syria in recent months. U.S.-led air strikes have so far failed to prevent its advance on Kobani.
The prospect that the town on the Turkish border could be captured by the militants has increased pressure on Turkey, with the strongest army in the region, to join an international coalition to fight against Islamic State.
Islamic State wants to take Kobani in order to strengthen its grip on the border area and consolidate the territorial gains it has made in Iraq and Syria in recent months. U.S.-led air strikes have so far failed to prevent its advance on Kobani.
The prospects, once the city is in the hands of ISIS, as Jeffrey Goldberg writes in the Atlantic, are for “A Terrible Slaughter.”
It is now too late to be prevented and the lesson, according to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan bombing would not be enough.
“The problem of ISIS (Islamic State) … cannot be solved via air bombardment. Right now … Kobani is about to fall,” he said during a visit to a camp for Syrian refugees. “We had warned the West. We wanted three things. No-fly zone, a secure zone parallel to that, and the training of moderate Syrian rebels.”
And perhaps those will not be enough to prevent the next Kobani.
