Women Kurdish peshmerga are fighting alongside their male compatriots to repel the ISIL assault on Kobani on the Syrian border with Turkey. The siege there has a become a powerful international symbol
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Video posted online purports to show Kurdish peshmerga fighters battling Islamic State militants in the town of Kobani on the Syrian border with Turkey.
The striking footage, although not as yet independently verified, shows Kurdish women fighting alongside men. The town appears to be devastated and the shooting intense.
“Our morale is very high” said one young Kurdish fighter. “As long as the jihadist enemy is attacking us we will fight them.”
But the siege of Kobani has now gone on for nearly three months and defending it comes at a cost. Hundreds of people have been killed and many more injured. Doctors are working in the most challenging conditions, improvising without essential drugs and other medical supplies.
Kobani is now little more than a ruin. Not long ago it was home to over 100,000 people, now just a few remain, their lives in continual danger.
“There’s nowhere to go” said one man with his family , “no underground shelter. We were sent back at the Turkish border and now we live here with constant shooting.”
Kobani is of little strategic significance, but it has become a powerful symbol of the ongoing battle against the hardline Sunni Muslim insurgents who have quickly gained control of swathes of Iraq and Syria.