- Fighting continues to rage between Islamic State militants and Kurdish forces in besieged Syrian city of Kobane
- Kurdish troops continue to fight jihadists with support of U.S. airstrikes despite being massively outgunned
- Headless and mutilated corpses of Kurdish fighters are said litter the streets of the besieged Syrian border town
- Kurds who have escaped to a refugee camp in the nearby Turkish town of Suruc tell of witnessing appalling horrors
- Photographs by the Daily Mail's Jamie Wiseman show ongoing fighting between ISIS militants and Kurdish forces
Thirteen-year-old
Dillyar cannot get the image of his cousin being beheaded out of his
mind. The pair were fleeing Kobane and running down a street when
Islamic State fighters blocked their exit.
Dillyar
managed to slip through their grasp but his cousin Mohammed, 20, was
seized, and gave a blood-curdling scream as one of the black-clad
maniacs drew out a knife.
'They
pushed him to the ground and sawed his head off, shouting 'Allahu
Akbar',' the schoolboy told me yesterday. 'I see it in my dreams every
night and every morning I wake up and remember everything.'
Destroyed: Syrian Kurd Kiymet Ergun, 56, raises her arms and gestures for peace following an American airstrike in Kobane
Calm: Syrian Kurd Kiymet Ergun, 56,
checks her mobile phone in Mursitpinar, southern Turkey. Thick smoke
rises behind her, following an airstrike by the US-led coalition across
the border in Kobane
Horror: Fighting continues to rage
between Islamic State militants and Kurdish forces in besieged Syrian
city of Kobane (pictured)
Choking: Heavy smoke rises from an ISIS-held building in Kobane following an airstrike by a US-led coalition aircraft
Strike: Smoke rises inside Kobane after Islamic State militants shell a Kurdish-held building inside the town yesterday
Destroyed: Fighting between Kurdish
forces and Islamic State militants inside the Syrian city of Kobane has
intensified in recent days
Fighting: This image show exactly
where ISIS militants are operating inside Kobane, and where U.S. and
Arab warplanes have been focussing their bombing raids. In the
foreground is the official Turkish border crossing
Besieged: The Kurdish town of Kobane
in Syria as seen from the Turkish side of the international border. A
Turkish army camp is seen close to the border itself
Trapped: This image shows the Islamic
State flag in both the east and west of Kobane, proving ISIS militants
have encircled the city
According to those who escaped, the jihadis' savagery is more hideous than anyone feared.
Headless
corpses litter the streets of the besieged Syrian border town, they
say, and some of the mainly Kurdish townsfolk have had their eyes gouged
out.
Refugees
who made it to Suruc, just across the border in Turkey, tell of
witnessing appalling horrors in hushed tones, as if they can barely
believe it themselves.
Father-of-four
Amin Fajar, 38, said: 'I have seen tens, maybe hundreds, of bodies with
their heads cut off. Others with just their hands or legs missing. I
have seen faces with their eyes or tongues cut out – I can never forget
it for as long as I live. They put the heads on display to scare us
all.'
Erupt: Smoke rises from a small ISIS-held building inside Kobane following an airstrike by a U.S.-led coalition warplane
Thick: A cloud of black smoke rises from ISIS-held buildings inside Kobane following an American airstrike
No fear: A person is seen walking in
northern Kobane as fighting continues to rage between Syrian Kurds and
Islamic State militants
Close quarters: Turkish soldiers on
the Syrian border watch as a explosions rock the besieged Syrian town of
Kobane in front of them
While the world watches: Turkish
soldiers on the Syrian border watch as a explosions rock the besieged
Syrian town of Kobane in front of them
Nearby: A Turkish military vehicle
sits on a hilltop overlooking the Syrian city of Kobane as the flag of
ISIS flutters in the background
Shell: A stray missile fired by an Islamic State militant inside the Syrian city of Kobane lands close to the Turkish border
Smoke: U.S. and Arab airstrikes take out Islamic State targets inside the besieged city of Kobane
Chilling: An Islamic State flag is seen flying high above a multi-storey building in the outskirts of Kobane
Rubble: A badly damaged building is seen inside the Syrian city of Kobane following another U.S. air strike
It worked. Mr Fajar, a floor fitter from Kobane, and his wife and children aged three to 12, ran for their lives.
'The
children saw the headless people. They saw them,' he said quietly,
sitting cross-legged on a rug in his tent in a squalid refugee camp in
Suruc.
Ahmed
Bakki, a farmer from a village near Kobane, said his cousin, a
48-year-old father of seven, stayed behind when the rest of the family
fled. 'We phoned my cousin and IS answered his phone.
They said, 'We've got his head, and we're taking it to Jarabulus (an IS stronghold)'.'
He
added: 'An English teacher in our village tried to reason with them,
but they just called him a kaffir (non-believer) and tied him to their
car and dragged him away. We heard they beheaded him later.
Shopping: Men continue going about
their business close to the Turkish border town Akakale. Luggage
belonging to European Jihadi fighters, complete with European airline
tags, often pass through this town, while the fighters themselves use
illegal smuggling routes
Fresh arrivals: A Kurdish family arrive at a huge Turkish refugee camp for victims of the fighting in the Syrian city of Kobane
Life continues: Young children play outside makeshift homes in a Turkish refugee camp close to the border with Syria
Temporary home: A Turkish refugee camp
for victims of the fighting in the beseiged town of Kobane is seen
close to the Syrian border
Temporary home: A Kurdish refugee camp
is pictured in the Turkish border town of Suruc yesterday. Most of the
families here fled Kobane when ISIS advanced into the city's suburbs
A Kurdish family are photographed in a
refugee camp in the Turkish border town of Suruc. Young children
described how they fled their home town of Kobane due to the threat of
massacre by ISIS militants
Innocence lost: A Kurdish refugee camp
in the Turkish border town of Suruc where young children described how
they fled the advancing forces of IS after witnessing their brutality.
Pictured are Hiva, eight, and her younger sister Jivara (three), both
from Kobane
A UN High Commission for Refugees
tented camp is seen in the town of Akakale, one of dozens along the
Turkish/Syrian border erected to house some of the 160,000 refugees who
have fled fighting and advances by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
'My
neighbour was beheaded because they said he was 'delivering vegetables
to the kaffir'. They burned his farm, livestock, even his bees – they
destroyed everything.'
This
'scorched earth' policy is being waged by jihadis whose most brutal
members seem to be Europeans. 'They are Chechen, they are English, they
are from all over Europe. We know because we can hear their accents,'
said Mr Bakki.
Another
man, Khalid, a teacher, claimed he had seen two fighters involved in
the crushing of Kobane, and he had been told by a friend that the pair
were boasting they were British.
The
United Nations estimates there are still 700 civilians in Kobane,
mainly elderly, and up to 13,000 in the surrounding areas under siege
from Islamic State, who 'will most likely be massacred' if the town
falls.
Smoke rises from
the Syrian town of Kobane. A group that monitors the conflict said
Kurdish forces faced defeat if Turkey did not open its border to let
through arms, something Ankara has appeared reluctant to do
Ominous: An Islamic State group flag
flies on a hilltop in Kobane, Syria. The town has been under assault by
extremists of the Islamic State group since mid-September and is being
defended by Kurdish fighters
UN
special envoy Staffan de Mistura has warned that the world faces the
spectre of 'another Srebrenica' – referring to the 1995 genocide of
8,000 Muslims during the war in Bosnia, which nobody intervened to stop.
Yesterday,
Daily Mail photographer Jamie Wiseman and I watched from a Turkish
hilltop next to Kobane as the terrifying onslaught unfolded. Islamic
State's menacing black flag flutters defiantly from buildings seized by
the heavily-armed maniacs.
Down
below, bursts of machine gun fire echoed across the valley, followed by
the bone-shaking booms of mortar bombs and pillars of grey smoke.
From
the hilltop, it is not possible to witness the street fighting at close
quarters. But propaganda-savvy Islamic State has released a video
offering a glimpse into the hell taking place at street level.
The
professionally-filmed footage shows its militants waging ferocious
attacks on homes inside Kobane, capturing the town house by house and
blasting rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns.
The
barbarians are now said to be in control of half of the town and have
reached its centre. Earlier in the week, punishing air strikes from US
and Arab warplanes appeared to force IS back towards the edge of Kobane.
Yesterday there were more bombs from fighter jets circling high above
the town, greeted with applause from Kurds on the hilltop.
But
although the air strikes are slowing the militants' advance in some
areas of the town, reinforcements are reportedly on the way from
al-Raqqa, their stronghold in Syria about 80 miles away.
For
the people of Kobane, there seems little hope, and for those who have
escaped, little solace. One girl, aged 19, screams all night long in her
tent in the Suruc refugee camp, four miles back from the frontier.
Bloody, but unbowed: Kurdish mourners
flash the V-sign as they sing a nationalistic Kurdish song at a cemetery
in Suruc during the funeral of two Syrian Kurdish fighters who were
killed in the fighting
Street fighting: An Islamic State
video shows militants fighting in Kobane. There have been reports ISIS
is mutilating corpses and mounting heads on walls
An ISIS fighter fires a rocket-propelled grenade during the bloody urban skirmishes
'Another man, Khalid, a teacher,
claimed he had seen two fighters involved in the crushing of Kobane, and
he had been told by a friend that the pair were boasting they were
British'
A
few miles along the dusty border from the hell unfolding in Kobane,
there is a new and spine-chilling threat. Jihadi snatch squads are said
to be lying in wait in Turkey to seize more Western hostages and spirit
them into Syria to meet Jihadi John, the beheader of innocent victims
such as Alan Henning.
There are hundreds of aid workers from Britain and other nations operating in Turkey's border areas.
If
Islamic State terrorists were able to operate in Turkey – a Nato state
hoping to join the EU – the brutality being waged on Europe's doorstep
will truly cross a line.
The
fact is, Turkey is already struggling to quell the threat of IS, and
faces the spectre of civil war because of its failure to do so.
The snatch-squad peril is most acute around the frontier town of Akcakale, 40 miles east of Kobane.
The
Foreign Office is now warning against all travel there, but we were in
Akcakale last week – before the warnings – investigating how easy it is
for British jihadis to cross into Syria. They wriggle under a wire fence
and instantly become citizens of the self-styled caliphate which
commands a firm grip on the territory in that part of Syria.
Kurdish Rabia Ali, right, accompanied
by her son Ali Mehmud, left, mourn at the grave of her son Seydo Mehmud
'Curo' , a Kurdish fighter, who was killed in the fighting with the
militants of the Islamic State group
Grim: Syrian Kurdish refugees who fled Kobane in a refugee camp in Suruc, on the Turkey-Syria border
Turkish tanks watching the besieged
Syrian town of Kobane from the Turkish side of the border, pictured in
the mist that hid the Kurdish town from view. The sounds of battle
could still be heard, however, and jets flying bombing missions overhead
didn't seem to be hindered
Their
belongings duly follow by road via the official border crossing – with
locals telling us they have seen rucksacks bearing British Airways, Air
France and Turkish Airlines luggage tags. There are even porters in
green vests to do the heavy lifting.
Dirt-poor
Akcakale has become a boom town for the cross-border trade in all
things jihadi, and a sinister feeling hangs in the air.
When
we took photographs near the border gate, a mob of men appeared from
nowhere and quietly surrounded us. One well-built young man scowled and
said in Arabic to our translator: 'What are you doing? No photos.'
Another group took a keen interest in the contents of our car parked
nearby.
This is the terrifying reality in a Turkey which is now the springboard to a terrorist state.
A
Turkey whose army – with tanks parked idly on a nearby hill – stands
accused of turning a blind eye to the atrocity on its doorstep.
Turkey's
failure to protect the Syrian Kurds in Kobane has triggered violent
riots among the country's own population of 15million Kurds. At least 33
people have died since Tuesday in the country's worst unrest in more
than a decade.
Given
the sickening stories being told by Kobane's refugees, it is easy to
understand why everyone fears the unrest in Turkey will escalate to
unprecedented levels if the town is allowed to fall.
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