Kurdish refugees stand and walk on a hilltop as thick smoke rises from the Syrian town of Kobani during heavy fighting between Islamic State and Kurdish Peshmerga forces, seen from near the Mursitpinar border crossing on the Turkish-Syrian border in the southeastern town of Suruc in Sanliurfa province on Sunday.

BEIRUT: More than 800 people have been killed in ground fighting for Kobani since Islamic State (IS) group militants attacked the Syrian Kurdish enclave on Sept. 16, a monitoring group said.

The IS have lost 481 dead, while 313 Kurds have been killed fighting to defend the area, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The figures do not include IS losses to US-led airstrikes, which the Pentagon has said run to “several hundred.”

Civilians accounted for 21 of the dead. The IS assault prompted nearly all of the enclave’s population to flee, with some 200,000 refugees streaming over the border into Turkey.

Kurdish fighters have kept up a dogged resistance inside the border town, buoyed by coalition air support and US arms drops earlier this month.

IS militants launched a wide offensive on Kobani in mid-September capturing dozens of Kurdish villages and entering parts of the town.

On Saturday, IS launched an attack on a Kurdish-held neighborhood in Kobani without succeeding in advancing, the Observatory said.

It added that seven IS fighters were killed as well as several YPG fighters.

An Associated Press reporter on the Turkish side of the border said occasional mortar fire could be heard in the center and west of the town as well as occasional gunfire.

At least one airstrike was carried out by the US-led coalition.

The US Central Command said in a statement that five airstrikes near Kobani destroyed seven IS vehicles and an IS building. It said the five airstrikes were conducted on Saturday and Sunday.

 
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