Kerry: Kobane retreat big defeat for ISIS

WASHINGTON DC - US Secretary of State John Kerry said Saturday that with the recapture of the Kurdish city of Kobane the Islamic State (ISIS) was “forced to acknowledge its own defeat."

Speaking at a meeting with his Canadian and Mexican counterparts in Boston, Kerry said, “We have a long way to go in the overall campaign, but Daesh - ISIL as some know it - has said all along that Kobane was a real symbolic and strategic objective.”

Kurdish fighters from the Peoples Protection Units (YPG) and the Kurdistan Region’s Peshmerga forces succeeded in driving out ISIS militants from Kobane last week after 133 days of intense fighting.

Kerry said that pushing ISIS out of Kobane was “a big deal.”

“And make no mistake, we will also use the same tools that we used to get there -- the tools of cooperation and support -- to defeat violent, transnational criminal organizations, and ensure that the rule of law thrives for all of our people,” he said.

Throughout the battle for Kobane the YPG coordinated with a force of 150 Peshmerga troops on the ground and the coalition air force that conducted more than 700 airstrikes against ISIS in and around the city.

The Kurdish forces, meanwhile, have taken back more than a dozen villages from ISIS militants on the outskirts of Kobane in the past several days as they have tightened their grip on the city.

On Saturday, an ISIS video appeared on the Internet and was broadcast by Al Jazeera TV, showing a militant saying in Arabic that the group was forced to withdraw from Kobane “because the fighter jets bombed day and night and they bombed every building. The city was completely destroyed with rockets and there was no place to hide anymore.”

More than 280 ISIS fighting positions have been destroyed since the campaign began in August, along with nearly 100 buildings used by the militants. Over 60 vehicles and a dozen tanks, along with weapons systems and other equipment, had also been destroyed.