KOBANI, Oct 26 — More than 800 people have been killed in ground fighting for Kobani since Islamic State group militants attacked the Syrian Kurdish enclave on September 16, a monitoring group said today.

The jihadists have lost 481 dead, while 313 Kurds have been killed fighting to defend the area, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The figures do not include IS losses to US-led air strikes, which the Pentagon has said run to “several hundred.”

Civilians accounted for 21 of the dead. The jihadist assault prompted nearly all of the enclave’s population to flee, with some 200,000 refugees streaming over the border into neighbouring Turkey. 

Kurdish fighters have kept up a dogged resistance inside the border town, buoyed by coalition air support and US arms drops earlier this month. — AFP