MURSITPINAR, Turkey (AP) -- Bolstered by intensified U.S.-led coalition airstrikes targeting militants from the Islamic State group, Kurdish militiamen fought pitched street battles Wednesday with the extremists in a Syrian Kurdish border town near Turkey, making small advances, activists and officials said.<br />
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Elsewhere in Syria, in a stark reminder of the country's wider civil war, a Syrian lawmaker was gunned down in the central province of Hama - the latest assassination to target a figure linked to President Bashar Assad's government.<br />
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In the border town of Kobani, members of the Kurdish People's Protection Units, or YPG, were making progress against Sunni militants, hours after the U.S.-led coalition stepped up airstrikes in and around the town, said Asya Abdullah, a Syrian Kurdish leader.<br />
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The U.S. Central Command said Wednesday that U.S. military forces conducted 18 airstrikes against Islamic State group targets near Kobani in the past 24 hours, destroying multiple fighting positions and striking 16 IS-occupied buildings. On Tuesday, the Pentagon had said that 21 airstrikes against Islamic State targets near Kobani overnight Monday marked the largest number there in a 24-hour period since the air campaign in Syria began last month.<br />
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Abdullah, the co-president of Syria's powerful Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, told The Associated Press that Kurdish fighters have advanced near the hill of Tel Shair that overlooks part of the town, taking advantage of the air raids that slowed the push by the militants. Abdullah spoke by phone from Kobani.<br />
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The U.S. and its allies have also struck oil facilities to try to cut off smuggling by the extremists, hurting the group's income in both Iraq and Syria.<br />
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The Paris-based International Energy agency said in a report that U.S.-led airstrikes have significantly weakened the Islamic State's ability to produce, operate oil fields and smuggle oil - a major source of income for the militants.<br />
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In its monthly report released Tuesday, the agency said the aerial bombardment has brought production down to around 20,000 barrels per day from a high of about 70,000 in the summer.<br />
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But in remarks underscoring the region's layered crises, Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc mocked the Kurdish fighters defending Kobani, comparing their struggle against the Islamic State group to the guerrilla war of the affiliated Kurdish PKK rebels, who have fought a three-decade insurgency in Turkey, largely in mountainous regions in Turkey's east.
