ISIS fight: Kobani battle rages on as Kurds get U.S. military supplies
Arms air-dropped to Kobani are in right hands, U.S. says, though 1 errant bundle had to be destroyed
Large explosions continued to rock the Syrian border town of Kobani on Wednesday, hours after the Pentagon warned the town could still fall to ISIS militants despite U.S.-led airstrikes targeting the area.
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One of the larger explosions, at about 7 a.m. ET Wednesday, sent a massive plume of grey smoke high into the air above Kobani.
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria militants have been battling Kurdish fighters for a month to take control of the town near the Turkish border, but stepped-up air strikes by U.S-led forces have helped Kurds fend off the advance.
The coalition has been bombing ISIS targets in Iraq since August and extended the campaign to Syria in September.
The Pentagon said on Tuesday the vast majority of military supplies air dropped near Kobani had reached the Kurdish fighters they were intended to help, despite an online video showing ISIS militants with a bundle.
Pentagon experts were analyzing the video and trying to determine if the bundle was the one the department reported earlier had fallen into the hands of ISIS or if it was a second bundle in the group's possession.
Pentagon officials said a U.S. airdrop had delivered 28 bundles of military supplies to Syrian Kurdish fighters near Kobani on Sunday and reported that one had fallen into the hands of ISIS militants.
The Pentagon later said it had targeted the missing bundle in an air strike and destroyed it.
Later Wednesday, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said the U.S. was wrong to air drop military supplies to Kurdish fighters defending the Syrian border town of Kobani, as some weapons were seized by Islamic State militants besieging it.
"What was done here on this subject turned out to be wrong," he said in Ankawa. "Why did it turn out wrong? Because some of the weapons they dropped from those C130s were seized by ISIL," Erdogan said, using an alternative acronym for ISIS.