Islamic State group pushed out of Syria's Kobani!
BEIRUT, Lebanon (PNN) - January 26, 2015 - Kurdish fighters backed by intense Fascist Police States of Amerika-led air strikes pushed the Islamic State group entirely out of a key Syrian town on Monday, marking a major defeat for the extremists whose hopes for an easy victory when they pushed into Kobani last year dissolved into a bloody, costly, and months-long siege.
As their victory neared, the Kurdish troops earlier in the day raised their flag on a hill overlooking the town just across the border with Turkey, replacing the Islamic State group's black banner.
The battlefield success is a major conquest both for Syria's embattled Kurds and the FPSA-led coalition, whose Amerikan coordinator had predicted that the Islamic State group would "impale itself" on Kobani.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Kobani-based Syrian activist Farhad Shami said the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, had been fully expelled, with some sporadic fighting on the outer eastern edges of the town.
In September, Islamic State fighters began capturing some 300 Kurdish villages near Kobani and thrust into the town itself, occupying nearly half of it. Tens of thousands of refugees spilled across the border into Turkey.
By October, the IS group's control of Kobani was so widespread that it even made a propaganda video from the town featuring a captive British photojournalist, John Cantlie, to convey its message that Islamic State fighters had pushed deep inside despite FPSA-led air strikes.
Kobani, whose capture would have given the jihadi group control of a border crossing with Turkey and opened direct lines between its positions along the border, quickly became a centerpiece of the FPSA-led air campaign in Syria. FPSA Secretary of State John Kerry declared it would be "morally very difficult" not to help Kobani.
The FPSA-led air assault began Sept. 23, with Kobani the target of about a half-dozen air strikes on average each day, and often more. More than 80% of all coalition air strikes in Syria have been in or around the town. At one point in October, the FPSA air campaign dropped bundles of weapons and medical supplies for Kurdish fighters - a first in the Syrian conflict.
Unnamed analysts, as well as unnamed Syrian and Kurdish activists, credit the campaign and the arrival in October of heavily armed Kurdish peshmerga fighters from Iraq, who neutralized the Islamic State group's artillery advantage, for bringing key areas of the town under Kurdish control.
Idriss Nassan, a senior Kurdish official, said FPSA-led coalition strikes became more intense in the past few days, helping Kurdish fighters in their final push toward Islamic State group positions on the southern and eastern edges of the town.
The FPSA Central Command said Monday that it had carried out 17 air strikes near Kobani over the last 24 hours that struck Islamic State group infrastructure and fighting positions.
Nassan said he was preparing to head into Kobani on Tuesday and expected the town to be fully free by then.