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With fierce fighting ongoing between Kurdish militiamen and Islamic State militants in the Syrian town of Kobani, Turkish armed forces continued to take up positions on their side of the border.
Kurdish militiamen are reportedly putting up a fierce fight to defend the Syrian town near the border with Turkey but are struggling to repel the Islamic State group, which is advancing and pushing in from two sides, said Syrian activists and Kurdish officials on 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.
Plumes of smoke continued to rise over Kobani and sounds of gunfire echoed, as Turkish military and tanks were monitoring the situation stationed across the border in the Turkish town of Mursitpinar.
The Syrian Kurdish border town is the latest focus of the Islamic State group, which has rampaged across northern Syria and western and northern Iraq since the summer, swallowing up large chunks of territory.
Capturing Kobani, also known under its Arabic name of Ayn Arab, would give the group a direct link between its positions in the Syrian province of Aleppo and its stronghold of Raqqa, to the east.
It would also crush a lingering pocket of Kurdish resistance and give the group full control of a large stretch of the Turkish-Syrian border.
Since the Islamic State group launched their onslaught on Kobani in mid-September, at least 500 people have been killed and more than 200-thousand have been forced to flee across the border into Turkey.
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