Jihadists on the run

Hunkered at the western edge of Kobane, clothes stained with sweat and the blood splatters of wounded comrades, the rebel commander and his men believed they had made their last stand.

But then the US Air Force struck, a bombardment that turned the tanks of the Islamic State into smoking wrecks and transformed the advance on this Syrian town into a rout.

"Our fighters have defended Kobane to the last gasp, the last bullet and the last fighter," said Khaled Barkal, the deputy president of the Kurdish administration for Kobane. "Now Kobane will be a cemetery for Islamic State."

Firas Kharaba, 39, the leader of Liwa al-Kassas or Retribution brigade, who was returning wounded fighters for treatment in Turkey, provided a first-hand account of the epic battle for the town which has become a test of the ability of US-led air strikes to defeat IS in Iraq and Syria.

After almost two weeks of aerial attacks, IS has begun to flee the Syrian border town it had been on the brink of capturing.

Fighting was continuing yesterday, with the Islamists reportedly taking heavy losses. At first, the air strikes had appeared to make little difference and the jihadists' advance had continued .

The crucial turning point, Kharaba said, was the US Air Force's destruction of a building where IS leaders had been meeting, killing everyone inside.

"About 30 major fighters were killed and some commanders," he said. IS was forced to call on a "police division" with little experience of front-line battles.

Knowledge of the town became key, and the Kurdish fighters, many of whom are locals, have the upper hand. By contrast, many IS fighters are foreigners unfamiliar with the town. Locals said they fought Tunisians, Moroccans and Saudi s as well as Syrians .

"The fighting became street by street or sometimes room by room," said Kharaba.

For the past year, IS had been closing in on Kobane, capturing and ruling the hamlets around it with an iron fist.

Inside, men, women and young boys bought rusty Kalashnikov rifles and signed up to volunteer with the YPG, the Syrian wing of the Kurdistan Workers' Party.

In a shift in alliance, Syrian opposition groups affiliated with the Free Syrian Army also came to the YPG's aid in Kobane, despite the YPG supporting the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Perwer Mohammed Ali, a Kurdish resident, told of a "joint operation room" by FSA and YPG.

Low in weapons, Kharaba and the other rebel groups devised ever more elaborate plots to stop the advance. "There was an empty hospital to the east of the city that we had occupied," he said.

"The IS immediately overran it. They were triumphant, thinking they had conquered our main base.

"But it was a trap. Before leaving, we had booby-trapped the place. We pressed the detonator and the whole building collapsed with the jihadists inside."

Though experienced in battle, the FSA and Kurdish forces had rudimentary weapons, said Kharaba. "We helped them retrieve the bodies of their dead," he said.

Some they could not save. Journalists in Kobane told of bodies lying bloated and rotting in the streets.