Siege of Kobanî
The siege of Kobanî was launched by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant on 13 September 2014, in order to capture the Kobanî Canton and its main city of Kobanî (also known as Kobanê or Ayn al-Arab) in northern Syria, in the de facto autonomous region of Rojava.
| Siege of Kobanî | |||||||||
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| Part of the Syrian Civil War, Rojava-Islamist conflict, and the American-led intervention in the Syrian Civil War | |||||||||
A map showing the progression of the siege of Kobanî, from October 2014 to January 2015 | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
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Rojava | Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
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Salih Muslim Muhammad Narin Afrin Mahmud Berxwedan Ismet Sheikh Hassan Meryem Kobani Hebun Sinya † Faisal Saadoun ("Abu Layla") Muhammad Mustafa Ali ("Abu Adel") Hasan al-Banawi ("Abu Juma") (from 18 November 2014) Abdul Qader Sheikh Muhammad ("Abdo Dushka") Saleh Ali ("Abu Furat") † Nizar al-Khatib ("Abu Laith") (until 18 November 2014) |
Abu Ayman al-Iraqi † (Head of Military Shura) | ||||||||
| Units involved | |||||||||
MLKP |
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| Strength | |||||||||
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1,500–2,000 YPG & YPJ (Kurdish claims as of 1 November 2014) |
9,000+ fighters (Kurdish claims) 30–50 MBTs 2 UAVs | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
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YPG & YPJ: 562–741 killed (3 MLKP) FSA and Jabhat al-Akrad: 29–72 killed Peshmerga: 1 killed (accident) |
1,422[*]–2,000 killed (per SOHR) 2,000+[**] killed (per U.S.) 1,068–5,000[**] killed, 18 tanks destroyed 2 drones shot down (per Kurds) | ||||||||
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Hundreds of civilians killed Over 400,000 civilians fled to Turkey | |||||||||
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* Additional hundreds of deaths by airstrikes ** 1,000+ by US-led Coalition airstrikes | |||||||||
By 2 October 2014, the Islamic State succeeded in capturing 350 Kurdish villages and towns in the vicinity of Kobanê, generating a wave of some 300,000 Kurdish refugees, who fled across the border into Turkey's Şanlıurfa Province. By January 2015, this had risen to 400,000. The Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) and some Free Syrian Army (FSA) factions (under the Euphrates Volcano joint operations room), Peshmerga of the Kurdistan Regional Government, and American and US-allied Arab militaries' airstrikes began to recapture Kobane.
On 26 January 2015, the YPG and its allies, backed by the continued US-led airstrikes, began to retake the city, driving ISIL into a steady retreat. The city of Kobanê was fully recaptured on 27 January; however, most of the remaining villages in the Kobanî Canton remained under ISIL control. The YPG and its allies then made rapid advances in rural Kobanî, with ISIL withdrawing 25 km from the city of Kobanî by 2 February. By late April 2015, ISIL had lost almost all of the villages it had captured in the Canton, but maintained control of a few dozen villages it seized in the northwestern part of the Raqqa Governorate. In late June 2015, ISIL launched a new offensive against the city, killing at least 233 civilians, but were quickly driven back.
The battle for Kobanî was considered a turning point in the war against Islamic State. The siege was referred by some to be the "Kurdish Stalingrad".