Mursitpinar, Turkey: Islamic State jihadists met dogged Kurdish resistance in the high-profile Syrian battleground town of Kobane on Sunday but they put Iraqi forces under heavy pressure, prompting the first US-led relief drops in Baghdad.
A roadside bomb killed the police chief of the Iraqi province of Anbar, between Baghdad and the Syrian border, where Pentagon officials have voiced concern about the vulnerability of government troops to a renewed IS offensive.
Further north, around the key oil refinery town of Baiji, the Iraqi army and its Sunni Arab tribal allies came under fresh attack, prompting the first resupply operation by a US-led coalition jet.
In Kobane, where IS is battling Kurd fighters under the gaze of the international media massed just across the border with Turkey, the jihadists were taking heavy losses, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
On Saturday, the IS lost at least 36 fighters in the battle with Kurdish militiamen for the town.
“It’s a decisive battle for the rebels,” Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said. IS was pouring in reinforcements from other areas in Syria, after its Friday capture of the Kurdish command headquarters in Kobane failed to deliver a decisive blow.
