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SURUC, Turkey — Kurdish militiamen are putting up a fierce fight to defend a Syrian town near the border with Turkey but are struggling to repel the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), which is advancing and pushing in from two sides, Syrian activists and Kurdish officials said Saturday.

The battle for Kobani is still raging despite more than two weeks of airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition targeting the militants in and around the town. The strikes, which are aimed at rolling back the militants’ gains, appear to have done little to blunt their onslaught on Kobani, which began in mid-September.

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Just outside the Turkish town of Suruc, across the border from Kobani, some 200 people gathered at a cemetery Saturday to bury two Kurdish fighters, a woman and a man, who died in the fighting.

The two fighters- 22-year-old Mujaid Ahmed and 20-year-old Fatma Sheikh Hassan – were laid to rest in two simple wooden coffins. Men took turns heaving shovels of dirt to cover the coffins as women wept. One woman kneeled over a freshly dug grave, tears streaming down her nose as others tried to console her.