ISIL has further tightened its stranglehold on the Syrian town of Kobani – a monitoring group says – as Turkish tanks on the border look on without intervening.<br /><br />It is infuriating for Kurds who want more than just US-led coalition air strikes on the extremists who now control at least 40 per cent of Kobani, including key Kurdish administrative buildings – according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.<br /><br />As Kurds at the border town of Surac held a funeral for ten kinsmen killed in the fighting, UN envoy Staffan de Mistura backed Kurdish calls for volunteers to be allowed into Syria to defend Kobani from ISIL.<br /><br />But one of the Kurdish mourners, Sari Ozcelik, said Turkey was stopping that from happening.<br /><br />“They have surrounded us with tanks and isolated us here. The Turkish government won’t allow us to cross,” he said.<br /><br />Some 200,000 people, mostly Syrian Kurds, have fled the fighting across this border. <br /><br />A government official in Kobani, Faysal now lives in a tent in Turkey with members of his family. <br /><br />“We saw with our own eyes how they are killing children, kidnapping women and selling them in markets,” he said. <br /><br />“What kind of person does this? And they call us unbelievers? I want them to explain to me what an unbeliever is. They tell us, we have forgotten our religion. But they are the ones who has misinterpreted religion, not us.”<br /><br />His life turned upside down, Faysal has no idea what the future holds for his family including his brother, still trapped in Kobani as ISIL’s grip on the town grows.
