Militants pour on more fire in battle to take Syrian city

Smoke rises above the town of Kobani, Syria, after U.S.-led coalition airstrikes Saturday. Heavy fighting occurred in the city Saturday as Islamic State fighters also launched an offensive.
Smoke rises above the town of Kobani, Syria, after U.S.-led coalition airstrikes Saturday. Heavy fighting occurred in the city Saturday as Islamic State fighters also launched an offensive.

MURSITPINAR, Turkey -- Fighters from the Islamic State launched a new offensive Saturday on the northern Syrian city of Kobani after shelling the area from their positions nearby, activists and a Kurdish official said.

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Heavy fighting took place Saturday afternoon in Kobani and many mortar shells were fired into the town. Machine-gun fire could be clearly heard from inside the town where black smoke was billowing.

U.S. Central Command said an airstrike destroyed an Islamic State artillery piece near Kobani. In the afternoon, warplanes could be heard flying over Kobani.

Idriss Nassan, a senior official in Kobani, said the fighting concentrated on the southern and eastern edges of the town, also known as Ayn al-Arab.

"They think they can enter the city and these are just dreams," Nassan said by telephone.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting concentrated on the eastern side of the town, surrounded on three sides by Islamic State fighters. It added that Islamic State fighters were spreading news in areas under their control that they would take Kobani on Saturday.

The Islamic State began attacking Kobani in mid-September and captured dozens of villages before entering parts of the city. The fighting has forced 200,000 people to flee to neighboring Turkey.

Last week, U.S. Central Command said its forces conducted more than 135 airstrikes against the militants in and around Kobani, killing hundreds of militants.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Aleppo-based activist Ahamd al-Ahmad said the area near the northern village of Handarat witnessed intense clashes between Syrian rebels and government forces.

Government forces are trying to cut a main road linking rebel-held neighborhoods of Aleppo, Syria's largest city, with those in the countryside, Al-Ahmad said via Skype.

The activist group said the fighting near Handarat has left 15 soldiers and pro-government gunmen dead as well as 12 opposition fighters since early Saturday.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon announced that a Marine who died Thursday of noncombat injuries in Baghdad was the second U.S. military death associated with the campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

The Marine was identified as Lance Cpl. Sean Neal, 19, of Riverside, Calif.

On Oct. 2, the Navy said a Marine who ejected from an MV-22 Osprey aircraft over the Persian Gulf was presumed lost at sea. The Osprey flew from aboard a Navy ship supporting U.S. operations in Iraq and Syria.

That was the first death associated with the fight against Islamic State. But Pentagon officials say that Marine isn't on the Defense Department's public list of deaths because the official paperwork hasn't been completed.

Information for this article was contributed by Bassem Mroue of The Associated Press.

A Section on 10/26/2014

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