BEIRUT — Islamic State militants on Sunday shelled a beleaguered Syrian Kurdish town near the border with Turkey, sending 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 Kobane, also known as Ayn Arab, as it presses its weeks-long offensive against the town and its surrounding villages.
The assault has forced 160,000 people to flee across the frontier in one of the biggest single exoduses of Syria’s civil war.
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 Kobane, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group.
The U.S. military said fighter aircraft conducted two strikes northwest of the city of Raqqa, hitting a large Islamic State unit and destroying six militant firing positions. The statement did not specify the location, but Kobane is northwest of Raqqa.
The Observatory said that the airstrikes, combined with heavy clashes on the ground overnight, left at least 16 militants dead. At least 11 Kurdish militiamen were also killed in the fighting.
Some of the fighting has spilled over into Turkey, with artillery rounds falling on Turkish soil.
On Sunday, one shell fired from the Syrian side struck a house in the Turkish village of Buyuk Kendirci, wounding four people.
Fighting between the Islamic State group and the Kurds is one aspect of Syria’s multilayered civil war, a conflict that has killed more than 190,000 people since the revolt against President Bashar Assad began in March 2011.
