(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters and moderate Syrian rebels bombarded Islamic State positions in Kobane yesterday, but it remained unclear if their arrival would definitively turn the tide in the battle for the besieged Syrian border town.
Kobane has become a symbolic test of the US-led coalition's ability to halt the advance of Islamic State, which has poured weapons and fighters into its bid to take the town in an assault that has lasted more than a month.
The battle has also deflected attention from significant gains elsewhere in Syria by Islamic State, which has seized two gas fields within a week from President Bashar Al Assad's forces in the centre of the country.
The arrival in Kobane of the peshmerga and additional Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters in recent days marks an escalation in efforts to defend the town after weeks of US-led air strikes slowed but did not reverse the Islamists' advance.
White smoke billowed into the sky as peshmerga and FSA fighters appeared to combine forces, raining cannon and mortar fire down on Islamic State positions to the west of Kobane, a witness said.
An estimated 150 Iraqi Kurdish fighters crossed into Kobane with arms and ammunition from Turkey late on Friday, the first time Ankara has allowed reinforcements to reach the town.
"(Their) heavy weapons have been a key reinforcement for us. At the moment they're mostly fighting on the western front, there's also FSA there too," said Meryem Kobane, a commander with the YPG, the main Syrian Kurdish armed group in Kobane.
She said fierce fighting was also continuing in eastern and southern parts of the city.
The peshmerga - formally part of the Iraqi army - have deployed behind Syrian Kurdish forces and are supporting them with artillery and mortar fire, according to Ersin Caksu, a journalist inside Kobane. The fiercest fighting was taking place in the south and east, areas where the newly arrived reinforcements were not deployed, he said.
Islamic State fighters in Syria said yesterday they had taken control of a gas field in the central province of Homs.
The hardline Sunni Islamist group posted 18 photos on social media showing the Islamic State flag raised in the Jahar gas field as well as seized vehicles and weaponry, according to the SITE jihadist website monitoring service.
Islamic State fighters, who now hold up to a third of Syria as well as swathes of Iraq, took the larger Sha'ar gas field on October 30.
The report said Islamic State had seized two tanks, seven four-wheel drive cars and several heavy machine guns.
Yesterday, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a Western-backed Syrian opposition group, the Hazzm movement, had lost positions and equipment including heavy weapons after being overrun by Al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front fighters in Idlib province, near the Turkish border.
Elsewhere, Islamic State jihadists beheaded eight Syrian rebels who had surrendered in a town on the border with Iraq last week despite pledges of an amnesty, a monitor said yesterday.
The Observatory said the men were executed and their bodies hung on makeshift crucifixes in Albu Kamal in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor.
"The men surrendered in Albu Kamal because the Islamic State had offered amnesty to people who fought them if they turned themselves in," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said.
Instead, he said, the eight opposition fighters were beheaded and then hung from crosses.
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