BEIRUT, October 1 (RIA Novosti) - Salih Muslim, the leader of the Syrian Kurdish party PYD, made a distress call on Wednesday claiming that Islamic State (IS) militants were likely to slaughter the residents of besieged Kobani, a town in northern Syria also known as Ayn al-Arab, unless the West armed Kurdish fighters, Lebanon's As-Safir newspaper reported.
The call for arms comes amid a weeks-long IS offensive against Kobani, which is one of the largest towns in the Kurdish region on the border with Turkey.
According to As-Safir, jihadists are stationed less than three kilometers away from the town. They are armed with tanks, guns and mortars seized from arsenals in the IS-held Iraqi city of Mosul, while Kurdish forces are outgunned.
Islamists are said to be in control of some 60 Kurdish villages. More than 140,000 residents have already fled Kobani and are living in Turkish refugee camps.
The United States earlier pledged to provide support, equipment and training to Syria's moderate opposition and troops in Iraq, to respond to the IS threat.
On September 10, US President Barack Obama unveiled a strategy to defeat the IS insurgency, which has been fighting the Syrian government since 2012 and later expanded their offensive to Iraq. Obama's plan included the creation of an international anti-IS coalition and airstrikes against IS positions in Syria, as well as in Iraq.
