MURSITPINAR, Turkey - U.S.-led coalition warplanes pounded Islamic State (ISIS) positions in the key Syrian border town of Kobane on Tuesday, only hours after the jihadists had breached the city lines.
White smoke billowed into the air as the bombs struck western parts of the city, while hundreds of Kurdish men cheered and whistled just across the border in Turkey.
The strikes appeared to have taken on a sense of urgency after isolated bombings around Kobane over the weekend did little to stop an ISIS advance.
A Rudaw reporter saw two air strikes within 15 minutes hit meters from the Turkish frontier, as fighter jets roared overhead. Several other strikes were reported earlier in the day.
An official of the self-declared Kurdish autonomous zone in northern Syria, speaking from inside Kobane by telephone, told Rudaw that air strikes on two ISIS positions in the morning had helped ease the pressure on the town's defenders.
ISIS militants pushed into Kobane overnight, waging street battles with the town's Kurdish defenders for the first time and raising fears it could fall to the jihadists following a weeks-long siege.
The insurgents have for the past three weeks been trying to seize the predominantly Kurdish and strategic border town, in an attempt to consolidate their grip along the Turkish frontier.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group, said the militants had captured two areas as night fell on Monday in the east of the town after heavy battles with Kurdish forces known as People's Protection Units or YPG.
In a symbolic move only hours earlier, the Islamists planted their black flag with white Arabic writing on a hill and at least one building on the town's outskirts, video footage from media on the Turkish side showed.
Islamic State's breach of the YPG's frontlines followed a day of intense fighting, which sent a new wave of refugees fleeing to Turkey. More than 180,000 Syrians, mostly Kurds, have already fled the surrounding area across the border in recent days.
News of ISIS' advance spread quickly on social media and small protests in support of Syrian Kurds broke out in several cities across Turkey after the main pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) called on people to take to the streets.
Tension just across the border from Kobane was palpable as hundreds of Kurdish men gathered to watch as the sound of occasional machine gunfire rang out from the town.
Turkish troops guarding the frontier fired heavy tear gas to disperse the crowds. Some threw stones back at the armored vehicles.
"Don't leave! Don't run away. Stand and resist!" One man shouted as the crowds scattered.
While Kurdish forces have largely been able to repel ISIS advances into their areas as the jihadists have captured other parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq in recent months, more recently they have found themselves increasingly outgunned.
Backed by tanks and heavy weaponry looted from Syrian and Iraqi military bases, ISIS' rapid advance has shocked the region and its Western allies.
The United States and other nations have been carrying out air strikes against ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq. However, they appear to have done little to stop the jihadists' advance.
The siege on Kobane has heaped pressure on Turkey to intervene in defence of the Kurds but so far it has been reluctant to get involved militarily, despite pledges not to allow the town to be overrun.
Ankara says it will not get involved unless a no-fly zone and "safe havens" are established in northern Syria, a demand Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu repeated late on Monday.
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