http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/09/world/middleeast/isis-advances-in-syrian-border-town-of-kobani-despite-airstrikes.html 2014-10-08 19:40:18 ISIS Advances in Syrian Border Town of Kobani Despite Airstrikes Officials in Kobani, a Kurdish town near the Turkish border, said Islamic State militants had set off a car bomb and were moving into new areas. === MURSITPINAR, Turkey — Gun battles and explosions echoed from the embattled Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani on Wednesday, as Islamic State militants detonated a car bomb and new American-led airstrikes hit the northern edge of the town, close to the Turkish border. A Kurdish official in Kobani, Assi Abdullah, said that despite the aerial bombing, Islamic State fighters had managed to enter new areas of the town and move north, closer to the border. That development, along with what could be seen of the fighting from across the border, suggested that two days of intensive airstrikes had not turned the tide against the militants. Kurdish fighters, as well as But they are divided on how to address the problem. Kurds insist that Turkey should allow Kurdish fighters, supplies and weapons to enter the encircled town through its territory, while Turkey refuses to do so unless the Kurds meet certain demands, including distancing themselves from their allies in an outlawed Kurdish separatist party in Turkey. Turkey has also balked at deeper involvement with the American-led coalition against the Islamic State, urging President Obama to focus on ousting the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and calling for an international no-fly zone and buffer area along the Syrian border, not necessarily in Kobani. Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday that preventing the town’s fall to Islamic State militants was not a strategic objective for the United States. “As horrific as it is to watch in real time what is happening in Kobani,” Mr. Kerry said at a news conference with the British foreign secretary in Washington, “you have to step back and understand the strategic objective.” He added that the focus had been on the militants’ ”command and control centers, the infrastructure.” Ms. Abdullah, the Kurdish official in Kobani, said by telephone that 15 civilians had been killed since “We still have thousands of civilians inside Kobani who might be massacred if Anwar Muslim, a lawyer and the head of the Kobani district, echoed those sentiments, saying it was illogical to ask the Kurds to denounce Mr. Assad and join Syrian insurgent groups fighting against him. “We don’t deal with the Syrian regime, and our borders with Turkey have always been quiet,” he said in a telephone interview. “We wish that Turkey would allow fighters from Qamishli to come through its territory,” he added, referring to a Syrian Kurdish area now cut off from Kobani, “and wish it had been earnest about standing by the Kurds against ISIS.” It was difficult to gauge the direction of the battle in Kobani on Wednesday, since Kurdish fighters could be reached by telephone only intermittently. In a shift from previous days, Islamic State militants did not shell the town on Wednesday. Kurdish fighters and officials reached inside Kobani early Wednesday said that Tuesday’s airstrikes, the most intense so far, had kept the militants from advancing beyond their foothold southwest of the town. Yet by Wednesday afternoon, as plumes of smoke rose above the town, the same people sounded more anxious on the phone. One large explosion, initially thought to be an airstrike, was claimed by Islamic State militants as a suicide car bombing. Ms. Abdullah, the Kurdish official, said the bomb hit a police station where Kurdish fighters were stationed. It was unclear if there were casualties. Coalition airstrikes continued into the late afternoon, sending towering columns of dust into the air and black smoke across the border. More than 186,000 Syrians have fled into Turkey over the last three weeks, as Islamic State militants have pressed their offensive in and around Kobani. More than 200 Syrians who crossed the border in recent days have been detained by the Turkish authorities, who have questioned them about their ties to the Kurdish militants defending the town, known as the People’s Protection Committees, or Y.P.G. On Wednesday, meanwhile, unrest spread to several Turkish cities with large Kurdish populations. Turkey’s military imposed a curfew in parts of the southeast after at least 18 people were killed in protests over the government’s failure to aid Kobani. It was the first time such a curfew had been imposed since a bloody Kurdish insurgency in the 1990s. The violence was the worst in years related to Turkey’s restive Kurdish minority, jeopardizing a fragile peace process. Protests also took place in Istanbul, Ankara and elsewhere. The worst rioting was in Diyarbakir, where at least 10 people died. Some of the deaths came in clashes between Kurdish activists and members of a Kurdish Islamist group sympathetic to the Islamic State.