Kurdish troops continue to fight jihadists with support of U.S. airstrikes


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.'

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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.