Video posted online purports to show Kurdish peshmerga fighters battling Islamic State militants in the town of Kobani on the Syrian border with Turkey.<br /><br /> The striking footage, although not as yet independently verified, shows Kurdish women fighting alongside men. The town appears to be devastated and the shooting intense.<br /><br /> “Our morale is very high” said one young Kurdish fighter. “As long as the jihadist enemy is attacking us we will fight them.”<br /><br /> But the siege of Kobani has now gone on for nearly three months and defending it comes at a cost. Hundreds of people have been killed and many more injured. Doctors are working in the most challenging conditions, improvising without essential drugs and other medical supplies.<br /><br /> Kobani is now little more than a ruin. Not long ago it was home to over 100,000 people, now just a few remain, their lives in continual danger. <br /><br /> “There’s nowhere to go” said one man with his family , “no underground shelter. We were sent back at the Turkish border and now we live here with constant shooting.”<br /><br /> Kobani is of little strategic significance, but it has become a powerful symbol of the ongoing battle against the hardline Sunni Muslim insurgents who have quickly gained control of swathes of Iraq and Syria.
