PHOTO: Kurdish men scale fence on Turkish border to return to Kobane area

LATEST: VP Biden Apologizes to UAE Over “You Support Extremists” Remarks

UPDATE 1815 GMT: The latest message from the President of the Kobane canton prepares to blame the international community for the fall of the town and mass deaths of civilians:

We are calling out to all the international powers, forces from Kurdistan, and Kurdish public that ISIS thugs must be stopped and thousands of civilians must be saved from massacre.

International powers and public will also be responsible for a probable massacre.

UPDATE 1705 GMT: A despairing message from Kobane:


UPDATE 1425 GMT: Journalists had clarified that the Islamic State is not in the eastern part of Kobane town, as reported by Reuters earlier. Instead, the jihadists have taken a building to the south/southeast of Kobane, near the offensive that captured Mishtenur Hill:

The jihadists have now taken another building near the town:


UPDATE 1145 GMT: Reuters are circulating an unconfirmed report, based on “television images” and a “Turkish military officer”, that the Islamic State has entered Kobane from the east.

The outlet said a “black flag apparently belonging to the group” was atop a 4-story building in the TV images, filmed from inside the Turkish border.

A Turkish military officer said the flag was that of the Islamic State.

Journalist Jenan Moussa, citing a Kurdish source, says an Islamic State suicide vehicle attack was repulsed:

She added this note about the lack of US intervention:

UPDATE 1040 GMT: Journalist Jenan Moussa, on the Turkish side of the border, reports on the escalating Islamic State attack on Kobane:


The Islamic State continued their advance on the Kurdish center of Kobane in northern Syria on Sunday, reportedly taking a key hill to the southeast of the town.

The jihadists attacked Mishtenur Hill, about a kilometer from Kobane, with armored vehicles and mortars throughout the weekend. Its capture means the Islamic State has an even better position for its shelling of the town, the capital of one of the three Kurdish cantons.

A British-based monitoring group circulated claims from social media that a female Kurdish fighter carried out a suicide bombing in an attempt to check the jihadists.

US Central Command said it carried out nine strikes near Kobane on Saturday and Sunday, but the attacks had little apparent effect on the Islamic State’s advance on Kobane from the west, south, and east.

Salih Muslim, the head of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), appealed for more substantial assistance:

The US bombed some of the ISIS positions around Kobane, but these were not enough.

The US is not serious. If the US were serious, they would not do it like that. They would have repelled these [ISIS forces] completely.

Whatever is going to be done must be done right now.

The jihadist offensive is entering its fourth week as it tries to consolidate its hold of much of northern and eastern Syria.


VP Biden Apologizes to UAE Over “You Support Extremists” Remarks

US Vice President Joe Biden has apologized to the UAE for remarks that it supported extremists in Syria in pursuit of a “proxy Sunni-Shia war”.

Biden’s apology follows a similar climbdown in a Saturday phone call to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

See Syria Feature: US to Turkey “Sorry We Said You Supported Extremists”
Syria Video: US VP Biden “Our Allies Were Our Biggest Problem. They Bolstered Extremists”

The Vice President had said that, in the effort to overthrow Syria’s President Assad, state such as the UAE, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia had backed groups such as the Islamist faction Jabhat al-Nusra and “Al Qa’eda”. He claimed that Erdoğan had later expressed regret for the “mistake”.

Like Ankara, the UAE demanded an apology for the remarks, made to an audience at Harvard University on Thursday.

Video: Insurgents Celebrate Capture of Key Hilltop of Tel Harah in Southern Syria

Insurgents film inside a regime military command post in Tel Harra in Daraa Province in southern Syria. The capture of the hilltop is another important advance for opposition forces as they consolidate their hold of much of Daraa and Quneitra Provinces and try to cut off Damascus from the south.

See Syria Daily, Oct 5: Islamic State Presses Attacks Near Kurdish Center of Kobane

An insurgent officer points to photos in the building, which he says prove the presence of Russian military forces in the facility.

The Oryx blog claims the post was for the operations of Russian and Syrian signals intelligence units, “recording and decrypting radio communications from every rebel group operating inside Syria”.