MOSCOW, October 9 (RIA Novosti) - Iraq's president has called for the protection of Syrian Kobani and asked the United States and the coalition countries to prevent the Islamic State (IS) from taking control of the border town, Al Arabiya reported Thursday.
The volatile situation in the town of Kobani and the consequences for security in Iraq, Syria and the whole region were discussed at a meeting between Iraq's President Fuad Masum and the US Ambassador to Iraq Stuart Jones on Wednesday.
Masum asked to "defend Kobani and prevent catastrophe," Al Arabiya reported.
Kobani, a Syrian border town with a Kurdish population, is currently fighting the Islamic State. Its tanks and artillery entered the town Monday evening, fighting street battles with the local residents.
Islamic State militants have been besieging Kobani for the last three weeks, causing almost 180,000 people to flee to neighboring Turkey and killing more than 170 Kurdish fighters and at least 20 civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
According to the latest reports, Islamic State militants have now seized control over more than one third of Kobani.
"ISIS control more than a third of Kobani. All the eastern districts, a small part of the north east and an area in the south east," head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdulrahman, told AFP in a phone conversation Thursday.
The Islamic State is a Sunni jihadi group that has been fighting the Syrian government since 2012. In June 2014, it launched an offensive in Iraq, seizing vast areas in both countries and announcing the establishment of an Islamic caliphate on the territories under its control.
Kurds are one of the ethnic groups in Iraq and Syria that have suffered greatly from IS violence.
In September US President Barack Obama announced his decision to form an international anti-IS coalition. Washington extended its airstrikes against the militants into Syria, while continuing airstrikes against the group's targets in Iraq. Obama said the United States would arm and equip Kurds, Iraqis and Syria's moderate opposition in an effort to eradicate the IS.
