AFP, TurkeyAttacking Islamic State jihadists met firm Kurdish resistance in the Syrian battleground town of Kobane, as neighbouring Turkey heeded pressure to intervene and handed the US access to its air bases.In Iraq however, Islamic State (IS) fighters have government forces under strong pressure, and a roadside bomb killed the police chief in Anbar province between Baghdad and the Syrian border.Farther north, around Iraq’s key oil refinery town of Baiji, the army and Sunni Arab tribal allies came under fresh IS attack, prompting a first resupply operation by coalition aircraft.In Kobane, on Syria’s border with Turkey, a pall of black smoke hung over the strategic town as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported heavy jihadist losses.IS poured in reinforcements and fired at least 11 rocket-propelled grenades into the town centre, said the Britain-based monitoring group.The Kurds managed to advance 50 metres (yards) towards their headquarters, two days after the jihadists captured it, but failed to deliver a knockout blow.”They (IS) are sending fighters without much combat experience,” Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said.Since proclaiming a “caliphate” straddling parts of Iraq and Syria in June, the militants have seized swathes of territory and earned worldwide infamy for atrocities-often videotaped and posted on the Internet.Hundreds gathered Sunday in Manchester, in northwest England, for a memorial service for Alan Henning, the British hostage who was kidnapped and beheaded after travelling to Syria to help deliver aid in a convoy.Henning’s murder-the fourth of a Western hostage since August-has outraged the Muslim community in Britain, moderates and hardliners alike, and he was hailed as a hero at the ceremony.
