ISIS Update - Dozens of Kurdish peshmerga fighters from Iraq were flying to Turkey on Tuesday. The Kurdish forces will advance across the border to fight ISIS for control of Kobani. The decision came after an Islamic State video was released that conveyed the battle in Kobani "is nearly over."
On the latest update in Kobani, Oct. 28 marked the forty-third day Kurdish forces have been fighting against ISIS, who have seized hundreds of surrounding villages and hope to merge territory from their Syrian headquarters in Raqqa to the Turkish border.
"It has been a long debate," Peshmerga spokesperson Halgurd Hekmat said about the decision of sending Iraqi Kurdish troops in Kobani through a CNN Turk statement. "But the peshmerga will go in two ways. Both land both from the air."
Hekmat also added that initial reports about the Peshmerga forces going to Kobani to provide logistic support were false. He said the forces will be battling the ISIS jihadists.
The decision to send Kurdish peshmerga fighters from Iraq to reinforce troops came a day after the releasing of a propaganda video by the ISIS that showed British hostage John Cantlie "reporting" from Kobani. Based on the update from BBC News, the kidnapped journalist appeared in an apparently scripted video when he said ISIS has not retreated from Kobani, in spite of several Western media reports.
In the latest ISIS video update shot in the battle-scarred Syrian town of Kobani, kidnapped British journalist John Cantlie said the battle for the town in the Turkish border "is nearly over" and the militants are "mopping up now."
Cantlie also referred to the events of the past two weeks, including a US airdrop of weapons for Syrian Kurd fighters. The video entitled as "Inside 'Ayn Al-Islam," which lasts for five minutes and thirty-two seconds, also featured a recording that was claimed to be shot by an ISIS drone.
"Now the battle for Kobani is coming to an end. The mujahideen are just mopping up now, street to street, and building to building," Cantlie said in the new ISIS video update. "You can occasionally hear erratic gunfire in the background as a result of those operations."
"But contrary to what the Western media would have you believe, it is not an all-out battle here now. It is nearly over. As you can hear, it is very quiet, just the occasional gunfire," he added. "Urban warfare is as about as nasty and tough as it gets, and it's something of a specialty of the mujahideen."
The release of the video update comes after the death of Cantlie's 80-year-old father, Paul, who had recorded a video message from his hospital bed urging ISIS for his son's freedom.
Kobani has been under ISIS attack for weeks. As said by Reuters, around 800 people have died in the Syrian town since the violent crisis started over a month ago. According to Fox News, the Islamic State militants seized dozens of Kurdish villages around the town. The battle also made over 200,000 people to flee for safety across the border into Turkey.
Meanwhile in an update on Monday, the YPG released a statement denying that Kobani had fallen to the vicious ISIS militants.
"It has been confirmed that 17 terrorists were killed yesterday on the eastern front, whereas number of weapons were captured by our forces," as stated in the statement. "In the last 24 hours five of our comrades selflessly sacrificed their lives, fought heroically and were martyred in action."
While YPG forces battle ISIS extremists on the ground, the US-led coalition airstrikes have blasted over 150 ISIS target in and around Kobani. In an International Business Times update, the US State Department said the bombings have helped push back Islamic State militants but stressed that the battle in Kobani is not yet won.
