ISIL fighters shell Syrian Kurdish town

ISIL militants shelled a beleaguered Syrian Kurdish town near the Turkish border on Sunday, sending pillars of smoke billowing into the sky as Kurdish militiamen scrambled to repel the extremists’ offensive, activists said. The Islamic State group has pushed to the outskirts of the town of Kobani, known in Arabic as Ayn al-Arab, as it presses its weeks-long offensive against the town and its surrounding villages. The assault has forced some 160,000 people to flee across the frontier in one of the biggest single exoduses of Syria’s civil war.

This is tearing our hearts out. We cannot even get a bag of bread to our comrades fighting over there.

Turkish Kurd Mahmut Yildirim, 55, watching the fight from across the border

The Islamic State group has continued to advance despite airstrikes against its fighters by the U.S. and its Arab allies. Overnight, coalition strikes targeted militant positions around Kobani, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights activist group. Those strikes, combined with heavy clashes on the ground overnight, left at least 16 militants and 11 Kurdish fighters dead, it said.

Middle East Kobani