Smoke rises after an airstrike in Kobani, Syria, on Wednesday. (Reuters)

Mursitpinar (Turkey) /Ankara, Oct. 8 (Reuters): US-led air strikes today pushed Islamic State fighters back to the edges of the Syrian Kurdish border town of Kobani, which they had appeared set to seize after a three-week assault, local officials said.

The town has drawn international attention since the Islamists’ advance drove 180,000 of the area’s mostly Kurdish inhabitants to flee into adjoining Turkey. Ankara has infuriated its own restive Kurdish minority and its Nato partners in Washington by refusing to intervene.

Islamic State fighters hoisted their black flag on the eastern edge of the town on Monday but, since then, air strikes have been redoubled by a US-led coalition that includes Arab Gulf states seeking to reverse the jihadists' dramatic advance across northern Syria and Iraq.

Intense gunfire and loud explosions could be heard this morning from across the Turkish border, and huge plumes of grey smoke and dust rose above the town, where the UN says only a few hundred inhabitants remain.

“They are now outside the entrances of the city of Kobani. The shelling and bombardment was very effective and as a result of it, IS have been pushed from many positions,” Idris Nassan, deputy foreign minister of the Kurdish-run Kobani district, said.

“This is their biggest retreat since their entry into the city and we can consider this as the beginning of the countdown of their retreat from the area.” Islamic State had been advancing on the strategically important town from three sides and pounding it with artillery despite dogged resistance from heavily outgunned Kurdish forces.

Defence experts said it was unlikely that the advance could be halted by air power alone — a fact that left not only Washington but also the Syrian Kurds’ ethnic kin across the border in Turkey demanding to know why Turkish tanks lined up within sight of Kobani had not rolled across the frontier.

The Turkish parliament voted last week to authorise cross-border intervention but President Tayyip Erdogan and his government have so far held back.

Many Turks prefer to risk alienating the Kurds rather than be sucked into a ground war in Syria, a prospect Erdogan says he would consider only as part of an international push that also sought to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Erdogan says Turkey will join the military coalition against Islamic State only if it also confronts Assad, arguing that the Syrian leader would otherwise take advantage of strikes against his foes.

Erdogan wants the alliance to enforce a “no fly zone” to prevent Assad’s air force flying over Syrian territory near the Turkish border, and create a safe area for an estimated 1.2 million Syrian refugees in Turkey to return.

Washington, which has so far managed to bomb Islamic State positions in Syria without Assad raising objections, has not agreed to expand the mission to confront the Syrian leader.

Ilnur Cevik, a columnist in the pro-government Daily Sabah, said yesterday that Turkey would not allow weapons to reach fighters from YPG, the Kurdish armed group defending Kobani, or send troops into Syria unless it is threatened more directly.

YPG has strong links to the PKK, still viewed by Ankara as terrorists.

“The government knows it cannot explain body bags coming from Syria to its Turkish majority with parliamentary elections only eight months away,” he wrote. “The only way Turkey will send its forces to fight (IS) is if Turkish territorial integrity is threatened.”