kobani Archives

Tovmassian family from Syria’s Kobani is granted refugee status in Armenia

September 12, 2015 by administrator

YEREVAN. – A refugee status has been granted to all members of the Tovmassian family, which had moved from Syria to Armenia.

Sosi Tovmassian told about the aforementioned to Armenian News-NEWS.am. She added, however, that they now need to rent a home.

“When we find a home, we will resolve the matter of sending the children to school,” said Tovmassian. “We want the school to be close to the house.”

With the support of General Vicar of the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople, Archbishop Aram Ateşyan, the seventeen-member—including eleven children—Tovmassian family, which had fled from Kobani city in Syria to Turkey, was relocated to Armenia on September 2. The family is temporarily living in a social home in capital city Yerevan.

Two Armenian families from Kobani to arrive in Yerevan next week

August 27, 2015 by administrator

Two out of three Armenian families that have moved to Turkey escaping attacks of the Islamic State terrorists will arrive in Armenia in the end of this week.

Two families expressed willingness to come to Armenia during a meeting with Armenian Deputy Patriarch of Constantinople Archbishop Aram Ateshyan.

Three Armenian families from Kobani have been taken to a refugee camp in Urfa province of Turkey.

Archbishop Aram Ateshyan contacted Turkish Foreign Ministry and Armenian Diaspora Ministry to tackle the problem.

They will arrive in Armenia on August 30 accompanied by Aram Ateshyan

Kurds retake Syria’s Kobani after Islamic State attack

June 27, 2015 by administrator

Syrian Kurdish fighters said they had fully secured the town of Kobani near the Turkish border on Saturday and killed more than 60 Islamic State militants, two days after the hardline group launched an incursion with suicide bombers, according to Reuters.

Further east, Islamic State pressed another assault on government-held areas of Hasaka city, clashing with the Syrian army after blowing up a security building late on Friday and triggering a government appeal for residents to take up arms.

“The people of the governorate and its surroundings continue to sign up with the Syrian Arab Army in its fight against terror,” state television said in a news flash on Saturday and played archive footage of soldiers set to rousing music.

Hasaka’s governor described the situation as “fine” but also called on residents to defend it in a phone call with state TV.

The twin assaults on Kobani and Hasaka came after Islamic State suffered two weeks of defeats at the hands of Kurdish-led forces, supported by U.S.-led air strikes.

Redur Xelil, spokesman for the Kurdish YPG militia, said Kobani was quiet and the YPG was combing the town for any hidden Islamic State fighters.

The YPG blew up a school building used by Islamic State in the town earlier on Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said, and plumes of smoke could be seen from the Turkish side of the border rising into the air.

The Observatory said a U.S-led airstrike killed at least 18 Islamic State fighters near Kobani. Islamic State killed around 200 civilians since the assault which started on Thursday, the Observatory said, describing it as one of the worst massacres committed by the group in Syria.

Reuters. Kurds secure Syria’s Kobani as Islamic State targets northeast

‘It is impossible to attack Kobani’s border gate from anywhere but Turkey’: official

June 26, 2015 by administrator

Kobani Canton Defense Minister Ismet Sheikh Hassan. Photo: ANF

KOBANI, Syrian Kurdistan,— All findings on the Islamic State group (IS) attack on border Kobani town of Syrian Kurdistan in which tens of civilians were brutally massacred point at Turkey’s central role in the attack. The Minister of Self-Defense for the Kobani Canton Ismet Sheikh Hassan who spoke to ANF stated that it was impossible to attack the border gate with vehicles full of explosives from anywhere but Turkey.

Tens of civilians, predominantly women and children, were massacred Report Ekurd

IS militants infiltrated into Kobani from Turkey on Thursday and carried out several attacks in and around the city center that claimed the lives of tens of civilians. IS militants blasted a vehicle near Mürşitpınar border gate and attacked the villages of Kaniya Kurda and Berxbatan as well as the Hellince road and the government building with bombs, rifles and snipers. 107 civilians were massacred during the attacks and many others were wounded.

‘YPG/YPJ responded strongly’

YPG/YPJ forces responded strongly to IS attacks and encircled IS groups in Şehid Moro neighborhood, Qada Azadi, Kaniya Kurda and Kobani high school. YPG/YPJ fighters killed tens of IS militants, expulsed all gang members except for the ones in Kobani high school, and caught 3 jihadi militants alive.

An attack similar to the one that happened on november 29

IS militants’ attack on Kobani yesterday resembles the one that happened on November 29 in many aspects. IS members had also crossed into Kobani from Turkey back then and attacked in 3 different locations. Thursday’s attack began with the bomb attack on the border gate and continued in different locations.

The only route to use in the border gate attack: Turkish soil

It is certain that the IS jihadi militants who infiltrated from Turkey carried out the attacks on the border gate and Kaniya Kurda because transportation to these places from another location is geographically impossible. There are dozens of YPG/YPJ checkpoints on the way to the border gate and Kaniya Kurda from within Syria and Rojava, and YPG/YPJ forces prevented previous suicide attack attempts before the jihadists reached the city center.

Cerablus road to the west, Halep road to the south, and the Hellince road to the east of Kobani are the only roads IS militants could have used for transportation, which are under heavy YPG/YPJ control. Even during the IS occupation of Kobani last December, explosive vehicles were blasted and prevented from reaching Kobani by YPG/YPJ fighters. IS militants have been aware of these YPG/YPJ preventions and had not tried similar suicide missions since Kobani resistance.

Attacks came from Turkey

The attacks at the border gate came from Turkey and anyone could see this when they watch the video footage of the explosive vehicle entering Kobani. IS militants who infiltrated in the town from the border gate and Kaniya Kurda had uniforms identical to Turkish military clothes and had shaved their beards in order to pass as Turkish soldiers and avoid detection.

In light of all these events, YPG/YPJ’s main success has been capturing 3 IS militants alive and the information they will give during interrogation will be crucial. Turkey’s gun and personnel support to IS, witness statements, seized documents, and the details of the last IS attack point at Turkey as the center in which this IS massacre was planned.

IS militants coming from Hellince road wore FSA uniforms, the IS militants who attacked the villages nearby had YPG uniforms on them and the IS militants coming from Kaniya Kurda wore Turkish military outfits. This method has also been widely used by the Turkish military in counter guerilla activities in Northern Kurdistan.

Anadolu Agency’s (aa) journalism success!

Another important detail of the attacks is Anadolu Agency’s live coverage of the explosion in the Mürşitpınar border gate. This suggests that either AA was informed about the attacks before they took place, or IS militants shared the video footage of the attack with AA. Either possibility points at the complex relations and cooperation between IS and the Turkish state, since there is no way for AA to provide live coverage for the attacks that were carried out in great secrecy.

‘It is not possible for is to reach the border gate through kobani’

Kobani Canton Defense Minister Sheikh Hassan confirmed our findings on the attacks and said that both the witness statements of YPG/YPJ fighters as well as video recordings confirm these findings.

Sheikh Hassan highlighted the impossibility of bringing explosive vehicles to the border gate through Kobani, and said that they would share more details on the attack in the near future.

Erdogan denies Islamic State launched attack on Syria’s Kobani from Turkey

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday dismissed as “propaganda” accusations that Islamic State fighters had been allowed to cross from Turkey into Syria to launch a fresh assault on the symbolic battleground Kurdish town of Kobani in Syrian Kurdistan.

Islamic State kills at least 145 in Syria’s Kobani attack

June 26, 2015 by administrator

Islamic State fighters killed at least 145 civilians in an attack on the Syrian town of Kobani and a nearby village, in what a monitoring group described on Friday as the second worst massacre carried out by the hardline group in Syria, according to Reuters.

Fighting between the Kurdish YPG militia and Islamic State fighters who infiltrated the town at the Turkish border on Thursday, June 25 continued into a second day, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group and a Kurdish official said.

A separate Islamic State assault on government-held areas of the northeastern city of Hasaka was reported to have forced 60,000 people to flee their homes, the United Nations said, warning as many as 200,000 people may eventually try to flee.

Islamic State has a record of conducting large scale killings of civilians in territory it captures in both Iraq and Syria, where it has proclaimed a caliphate to rule over all Muslims according to an ultra-hardline vision of Islam.

The attack on the predominantly Kurdish town of Kobani and the nearby village of Brakh Bootan marked the biggest single massacre of civilians by Islamic State in Syria since it killed hundreds of members of the Sunni Sheitaat tribe last year, Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Observatory, said.

He said 146 civilians had been killed. Kurdish officials said at least 145 had died.

The assault included at least three suicide car bombs. The dead included the elderly, women and children, he said.

The Islamic State fighters were reported to number in the dozens and entered the town in five cars disguised as members of the YPG and Syrian rebel groups.

In their other assault on Friday, Islamic State fighters clashed with Syrian government forces in the south of Hasaka for a second day and shells hit areas in the center, the Observatory said.

It appeared that Islamic State was also fanning out toward the southeast of the city, which is divided into zones run separately by the Syrian government and a Kurdish administration that oversees the YPG.

The twin attacks which began on Thursday showed the fighters returning to the offensive after two weeks of defeats at the hands of Kurdish-led forces, supported by U.S.-led air strikes. Earlier this week the Kurds advanced to within 50 km (30 miles) of Raqqa city, the de facto capital of Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate.

In the latest battles, Islamic State has picked targets where it is difficult for the U.S.-led alliance to provide air support to those fighting on the ground. In Kobani, also known as Ayn al-Arab, aerial bombardment risks civilian casualties in residential areas targeted in the attack.

In Hasaka the Islamic State targets were in areas controlled by President Bashar al-Assad. The U.S.-led coalition, which has been bombing Islamic State targets in both Syria and Iraq since last year, has ruled out cooperating with Damascus.

Photo: Reuters

Claims of complicity irk Turkey after ISIL’s attack on Kobani

June 25, 2015 by administrator

The unexpected and deadly attack of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants on Syria‘s Kobani early on Thursday unleashed a torrent of debate over how the fighters penetrated the town and whether they entered from Turkish territory, prompting Turkish officials to strongly deny such claims. Report ZAMAN

Explosions are captured, by a camera on the Turkish side of the border moments after car bombs detonate in the Kurdish town of Kobani in Syria. (Photo: DHA)

Although Ankara rebuffed claims of allegations that ISIL fighters came from Turkish territory in the strongest possible terms, prominent Kurdish politicians appeared to be doubtful with the official explanation and questioned the alleged role of the Turkish government in the latest attack on Kobani.

Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Tanju Bilgiç called such allegations lies, denying reports of fighters crossing the Turkish border. Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş expressed dismay over the accusations, calling them a smear campaign against Turkey.

“Turkey has been on full alert from the first moment of the attack for wounded from Kobani and asylum seekers in need of humanitarian aid,” he tweeted.

Turkey’s pro-Kurdish party described the ISIL attack on the Syrian border town of Kobani as a massacre and blamed it on Turkish state support for the militants, comments that will fuel tension in Ankara amid attempts to form a government.

“The whole world knows the Turkish government has supported ISIL for years. Today’s massacre is a part of this support,” said Figen Yüksekdağ, co-leader of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). “The remarks of Turkish politicians are null and void for us. It is up to the Turkish government to prove it does not support ISIL,” she told reporters at a press conference in Ankara on Thursday.

“If this massacre took place without your support, then explain it, prove it. Otherwise our claims are valid,” she added.

Challenging the Şanlıurfa governor’s official statement, Yüksekdağ said it is implausible that ISIL militants came from Jarablus, to the west of Kobani, while Mürşitpınar is very close to Kobani.

The office of Şanlıurfa governor earlier in the day said in a statement that evidence showed the militants had entered Kobani from the Syrian town of Jarablus.

“Why have ISIL militants, on many occasions, easily slipped through the Turkish border, but not on this one when they attacked Kobani? It is unfathomable. We consider the possibility that they crossed the border [on this occasion],” Yüksekdağ said.

While Turkey is part of the US-led global anti-ISIL coalition, its Western allies voice resentment over what they say is Ankara’s reluctance to take a more active part in the campaign against the militant group. Turkey’s Western partners repeatedly call on Ankara to do more to curb Syria-bound fighters crossing its border to join ISIL.

Democratic Union Party (PYD) leader Salih Muslim also said all signs and findings reveal that ISIL fighters entered Kobani from Turkey. In the latest effort to seek to calm Turkey’s jittery nerves over the creation of a separate Kurdish zone in northern Syria after Kurds’ capture of Tel Abyad from ISIL, Muslim said again on Thursday that the PYD has no separatist agenda.

He said claims of ethnic cleansing by Kurds in Syria’s north is an affront to them as Syrian Kurds are the ones who suffered most from such policies in the past.

The pro-Kurdish HDP entered Parliament for the first time after clearing a 10 percent threshold in the June 7 election.

Its success helped to deprive the governing Justice and Development Party (AK Party) founded by President Tayyip Erdoğan of a majority needed to form a single-party government for the first time in over a decade. The AK Party needs to find a coalition partner to form the government. The HDP success at election also sank Erdoğan’s long-sought bid for an executive presidency as the AK Party was stripped of its majority in Parliament.

ISIL attacks Syrian government and Kurds in twin assault

ISIL fighters launched simultaneous attacks against the Syrian government and Kurdish militia overnight on Wednesday, moving back onto the offensive after losing ground in recent days to Kurdish-led forces near the capital of their “caliphate.”

After recent losses to the Kurds backed by US-led air strikes, ISIL sought to retake the initiative with incursions into the Kurdish-held town of Kobani at the Turkish/Syria border and government-held areas of Hasaka city in the northeast.

In a separate offensive in the multi-sided Syrian civil war on Thursday, an alliance of rebels in the south of the country also launched an attack with the aim of driving government forces from the city of Deraa.

The attacks by ISIL follow a rapid advance by Kurdish-led forces deep into the hard-line group’s territory, to within 50 kilometers (30 miles) of its de facto capital Raqqa, hailed as a success by Washington.

The United States and European and Arab allies have been bombing ISIL since last year to try to defeat ISIL, which a year ago proclaimed a caliphate to rule over all Muslims from territory in Syria and Iraq.

ISIL advanced rapidly last month, seizing cities in both Syria and Iraq. The latest Kurdish advance in Syria has shifted momentum back against the jihadists, but ISIL fighters have adopted a tactic of advancing elsewhere when they lose ground.

The group said it had seized the al-Nashwa district and neighboring areas in the southwest of Hasaka, a city divided into zones of government and Kurdish control. Government forces had withdrawn towards the city center, it said in a statement.

Syrian state TV said ISIL fighters were expelling residents from their homes in al-Nashwa, executing people and detaining them. Many ISIL fighters had been killed, it said, including one identified as a Tunisian leader.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the war, said ISIL had seized two districts from government control.

Thursday’s separate ISIL attack on Kobani, also known as Ayn al-Arab, began with at least one car bomb in an area near the border crossing with Turkey, according to Kurdish officials and the Observatory. ISIL fighters were battling Kurdish forces in the town itself.

Kobani was the site of one of the biggest battles against ISIL last year. The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) , backed by US air strikes, expelled the fighters in January after four months of fighting.

YPG spokesman Redur Xelil said Thursday’s attackers had entered the town from the west in five cars, deceptively flying the flag of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army movement, which has fought alongside the YPG against ISIL.

“They opened fire randomly on everyone they found,” he told Reuters.

A doctor in Kobani, Welat Omer, said 15 people had been killed and 70 wounded, many of them seriously. Some had lost limbs. Some of the wounded had been taken to Turkey.

Around 50 people fled to Kobani’s Murşitpınar border gate with Turkey after the attack, seeking to cross the border, local witnesses said. Syrian state TV said the attackers had entered Kobani from Turkey — a claim denied by the Turkish government.

ISIL militants also killed at least 20 Kurdish civilians in an attack on a village south of Kobani, the Observatory reported.

A Syrian official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said ISIL appeared to be trying to divert the focus of forces fighting it because of the pressure it was now under near Raqqa: “I believe this is why they moved to Hasaka — because they felt great danger from the situation in Raqqa.”

The Kurdish militia say they currently have no plan to march on Raqqa city.

ISIL storms Hasaka

ISIL militants in Syria stormed government-held neighborhoods in the predominantly Kurdish northeastern city of Hasaka on Thursday morning, capturing several areas of the city, officials and state media said.

The attack came after the ISIL group suffered several setbacks in northern Syria against Kurdish forces over the past weeks. The city of Hasaka is divided between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and Kurdish fighters.

Redur Xelil, a spokesman for the YPG, said ISIL militants attacked government-held neighborhoods on the southern edge of Hasaka, and captured some areas.

Syrian state TV reported intense clashes inside Hasaka’s southern neighborhood of Nashawi. According to the report, ISIL fighters killed several people they captured in the city, including the head of a military housing institution. It said the militants sustained many casualties, including the commander of the group who is a foreign fighter.

ISIL tried to storm the city earlier this month and reached its southern outskirts before facing strong resistance from Syrian government troops who pushed them away.

Read I told you so: http://wp.me/p2E179-9Xx

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Syrian man claims Turkey is building new tomb on his property

February 24, 2015 by administrator

A Syrian man from Syria’s Kurdish town of Kobani has claimed that the land on which Turkey has chosen to move the recently exhumed remains of Süleyman Şah actually belongs to him and that no one informed him that the tomb would be built on his private property, a Turkish daily has reported.

According to a report published by the Vatan daily on Tuesday, the plot of land Turkey chose to rebuild the tomb, which is about 200 meters away from the Turkish-Syrian border in Şanlıurfa in an area being called Syrian Eşme, belongs to a 45-year-old Syrian man named Bozan Osman

Speaking to the daily, Osman, who took shelter in Şanlıurfa’s Birecik district near his relatives when clashes between Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants and Kurdish fighters broke out last autumn, said the land where the new tomb will reportedly be built belongs to him. He added that he didn’t sell the land or make any agreement with anyone regarding it.

“I saw Turkish soldiers going toward our village on [Saturday] night. I mean, the distance is [so close], around 200 meters. When we looked there [his land] in the morning, we saw the troops. I went to our mukhtar, Suphi Yavuz, and asked if the Turkish troops were on our land. The mukhtar told me: ‘Nothing bad will happen. The Turkish Republic is a big state and it won’t cause you grievance.’ The area is around 1,000 square meters. The whole of it belongs to me. No one came to me beforehand to inform me [that the tomb would be placed there],” Osman said.

The Syrian man also claimed that he went to speak with the Turkish soldiers and they also told him that “nothing bad will happen.”

He spoke about how the conditions of war in the area have affected him and the 12 members of his family, and he asked the Turkish government for help: “We are already in a difficult situation. While we were in Syria, we were earning our living by farming the land where the tomb will be built. We had planted wheat and barley. We are asking for help from the Turkish government. Land in Syria is too expensive. We don’t know what will happen.”

Syrians slowly return to Kobani

February 23, 2015 by administrator

Kobani

Around 4,000 refugees have trickled back to the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani but many are wary of returning to the site of a four-month battle between Kurdish and Islamic State forces, officials said Monday, according to Reuters.

Much of the town of over 200,000 was destroyed by the fighting, in which the Kurds held off militant Islamists trying to overrun the border area, and potential returnees are worried by the many unexploded bombs and mortars there, they said.

“Turkey keeps track of exits as well as entries. And the latest figure shows around 4,000 people have gone back to Kobani,” a spokesman for Turkey’s disaster management agency AFAD told Reuters.

Kobani official Idris Nasan said 15 people had died and many have been injured in accidents involving live explosives since the siege of the city was lifted last month.

“It’s not safe for them. But they were looking forward to coming back,” he said, calling on the international community to help clear Kobani of explosives.

Almost the entire population of the town fled across the border to Turkey last year to escape ISIS’ advance.

Kurdish forces assisted by Iraqi peshmerga forces and almost daily air strikes by the U.S.-led coalition drove out the ultra radical Sunni insurgents in late January and took back the town, which is now in ruins.

Source: Panorama.am

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#kobani Islamic State Fighters Admit Kobani Defeat

January 31, 2015 by administrator

VOA News

January 31, 2015 2:39 PM

Islamic State fighters released a video Saturday acknowledging their defeat in the Syrian town of Kobani, but they vowed they would attack again. #kobani

In the video, two men claiming to be militants said airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition were the main reason the group was forced to withdraw from Kobani.

“A while ago, we slowly started retreating from Ayn al-Islam due to the shelling and the murder of some of our brothers,” said one of the fighters in the video, using the name the Islamic State group prefers for Kobani.

Kurdish fighters claimed Monday to have recaptured the embattled border town, after months of fighting there. Much of the city, once home to 200,000 people, is in ruins from the battles.

The turn in the fight for Kobani could prove to be a key defeat for the Islamic State, which over several months has taken control of vast parts of Syria and Iraq.

Kurds take full control of Syria’s Kobani from ISIL

January 26, 2015 by administrator

Syrian Kurdish fighters have managed to take full control of the northern border town of Kobani from the ISIL Takfiri terrorists following more than four months of fighting.

Kurdish fighters from the People’s Protection Units (YPG) have driven out all the ISIL militants from the embattled Syrian town, known in Arabic as Ain al-Arab, Rami Abdel Rahman, the director of the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said on Monday.

The UK-based observatory’s official said the Kurds have full control of the city.

He added that the Kurdish fighters are chasing some terrorists on the eastern outskirts of Kobani, “but there is no more fighting inside now.”

The loss of Kobani is a key loss and heavy blow to the ISIL militants.

In September, the ISIL militants captured some 300 Kurdish villages near Kobani and thrust into the town itself. Tens of thousands of refugees spilled across the border into Turkey.

Backed by Kurdish Peshmerga forces, YPG has made significant progress in retaking positions from terrorists in north Syria.

The battle for the town has claimed the lives of more than 1,600 people, most of them from ISIL.

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