The main Kurdish armed group in Syria yesterday called on compatriots to help them prevent a massacre in the Syrian city of Kobani, which Islamic State militants surrounded with tanks and bombed its outskirts.
US-led forces have been bombing ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq, but the action has not stopped the Islamists' advance in northern Syria towards the Turkish border, putting pressure on Ankara to intervene.
Canada has announced that it will send aircraft to participate in attacks against ISIL in Iraq for a period of up to half a year.
Turkey has said it will do everything in its power to prevent Kobani, a predominantly Kurdish city across its southern border, from falling to ISIL. It has not committed itself to direct military intervention, and Syria yesterday warned against any Turkish "aggression" on its territory.
A statement issued by the YPG, the main Kurdish armed group, pledged "uninterrupted" resistance to ISIL in its Kobani offensive. "Every street and house will be their grave."
"We invite all the young men and women of Kurdistan...to come and be part of this resistance."
Esmat al-Sheikh, the leader of the Kurdish forces defending Kobani, said the distance between his fighters and the rebels was now less than a kilometer.
"We are in a small, surrounded area. No reinforcements have reached us and the borders are closed," he told Reuters by phone. "I expect general massacre and destruction."
ISIL has conquered large parts of eastern Syria and western Iraq with the aim of creating a caliphate between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Kobani's resistance prevented the group from consolidating territory across northern Syria.
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