Dozens of Islamic State fighters killed as battle for Kobani rages on

Forty-one Islamic State militants were killed in the Syrian border town of Kobani on Tuesday as U.S.-led air strikes helped local forces push the group to the city’s edges, a monitoring group said. The predominantly Kurdish town, known as Ayn al-Arab in Arabic, close to the Turkish border, has become a symbol in the international fight against the hardline Islamist group that broke away from al Qaeda. The U.S. military said it, together with coalition partners, had conducted 10 air strikes against IS in Syria, mostly on Kobani, since Monday. As well as the 41 IS members, seven Kurdish fighters and two civilians were killed in the fighting, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the war that has dragged on for four years. Meanwhile, The Kurds, who have secured effective self-rule in northern parts of Syria, now control around 80 percent of Kobani, pushing Islamic State out towards the south and southeast, according to the Observatory.

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