Warplanes and Kurds stave off ISIL as hostage awaits fate

Fighting rages as ISIL attempts to seize a strategic hilltop that would give it access to Kobani while a militant threat to behead another aid worker provokes international condemnation.

Peter Kassig with a truckload of supplies for Syrian refugees. A video purportedly produced by militants in Syria released on Friday shows Mr Kassig, of Indianapolis, USA, kneeling on the ground as a Show more

MURSITPINAR, Turkey // Kurdish fighters supported by US-led airstrikes held back ISIL fighters attacking a Syrian border town on Saturday, following an international outcry at the murder of a British hostage by the militant group and the threat to kill a captured US aid worker.

Dozens of ISIL militants – who have seized large parts of Syria and Iraq – were reported killed in the latest coalition raids.

The dusty Syrian town of Kobani on the Turkish border has become a key battleground between ISIL and its opponents, who include Kurdish fighters as well as the United States and its allies.

The US military said four airstrikes hit the Kobani area overnight.

Fighting raged on Saturday as militants attempted to seize a strategic hilltop that would give them access to the town, activists said.

Mortar rounds pounded the town as smoke rose above it, witnesses on the Turkish side of the border said.

Sebahat Tuncel, a Kurdish member of Turkey’s parliament, told told reporters after visiting Kobani: “The resistance is continuing. The danger has not yet been overcome.”

Five militants were killed in US air raids near the town, as well as 30 more around Shadadi in north-eastern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

ISIL militants fired at least 80 mortar rounds on Friday into Kobani, which is also known as Ain Al Arab.

The fighting killed at least 10 Kurdish militia members, said the Britain-based Observatory, which monitors the conflict.

But activist Mustafa Ebdi said Kurdish fighters had been buoyed by their success at holding off the assault so far, noting that the militants had hoped to capture the town by Saturday for the Muslim Eid Al Adha festival.

“So far they have failed to enter the town,” Mr Ebdi said.

ISIL began its advance towards Kobani on September 16, seeking to cement its grip over a long stretch of the border.

It has prompted a mass exodus of residents from the town and the surrounding countryside, with some 186,000 fleeing into Turkey.

Syrian state media also reported coalition strikes on Saturday in Al Quriyah in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, with a tank destroyed.

In neighbouring Iraq, unidentified gunmen killed 10 soldiers and Shiite allied militiamen in two separate attacks in Diyala province north-east of the capital Baghdad.

American bombers and fighter jets also carried out five airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq, the US military said.

As the fighting raged, the famiy of the captured American aid worker Peter Kassig made a desperate videotaped plea for his release after he appeared on Friday being threatened by a knife-wielding militant in an ISIL video showing the execution of Alan Henning, a 47-year-old British volunteer driver who went to Syria with a Muslim charity.

“We implore his captors to show mercy and use their power to let our son go,” Ed Kassig said, referring to his 26-year-old son by his adopted Islamic name of Abdul Rahman.

Ed Kassig said his son was taken captive on October 1, 2013, when he was providing aid for refugees fleeing the country’s civil war through an organisation he founded.

A masked militant in the ISIL video directly addressed British prime minister David Cameron, who has sent RAF bombers to strike militants in Iraq as part of the US-led alliance.

“The blood of David Haines was on your hands, Cameron,” he said, referring to another British aid worker killed by the group.

“Alan Henning will also be slaughtered, but his blood is on the hands of the British parliament,” he declared.

In Britain, Henning’s family paid tribute to the “decent, caring human being” who was a husband and father of two.

British Muslims condemned his killing.

“Alan Henning was our local and national hero,” said Imam Asim Hussain of Manchester Central Mosque.

Mr Cameron said the killing “shows just how barbaric and repulsive these terrorists are”, a condemnation echoed by the European Union and the UN Security Council.

US president Barack Obama denounced the “brutal murder” and vowed decisive action against ISIL.

Washington is leading a coalition of nations against the militant organisation, which has declared an Islamic “caliphate” in parts of Syria and Iraq.

British police are also investigating video footage of an unmasked ISIL fighter, speaking with a British accent and identified by the SITE monitoring group as Abu Saeed al-Britani, railing against Cameron over British airstrikes on Iraq.

Meanwhile, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan angrily rejected comments by US vice president Joe Biden that Turkey and others in the region had financed and armed militant organisations in Syria.

* Agence France-Press