TURKISH-SYRIAN BORDER (CNN) — In the besieged Syrian city of Kobani, precious medicine rains from the sky.
Antibiotics, anesthetics, sanitary supplies and bandages — all desperately needed to treat local fighters and civilians wounded during the siege of this crucial town near the Turkish border.
U.S. airplanes are dropping medical supplies and weapons into this Kurdish city as defenders try to beat back the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Not long ago, Kobani’s fall to ISIS seemed certain. But foreign airstrikes and airdropped supplies could help turn the tide.
“We thank the people who brought these medical supplies,” said Dr. Wolat Omar, who has been braving enemy artillery for weeks to treat the wounded in a makeshift clinic.
Even though local defenders control some 70% of the city, Kobani is cut off, and ISIS forces have been shelling it with mortars from the east and south, local government official Anwar Muslim said this week.
Tens of thousands of civilians have fled to Turkey amid weeks of intense fighting by Kurdish forces for full control of Kobani, a border town that’s one of the last in the region to resist falling to ISIS.
In the wrong hands?
But some the supplies may have landed in the hands of ISIS.
One of the 28 bundles dropped in and around Kobani on Monday drifted away from the target zone, a U.S. official said. The U.S. military said it went back and blasted it.
But a video posted on social media shows what appears to be an ISIS fighter next to a parachute bundle. He goes on to show what appears to be the contents of the bundle, including crates of hand grenades and mortar rounds.
CNN cannot independently confirm whether those items in the video are from a U.S. airdrop.
Battles in Iraq continue
As Kurdish fighters keep battling ISIS in Syria, the militant group continues its offensive in Iraq.
The Iraqi military and tribal forces tried to repel an attack on Amriyat al Falluja on Wednesday, said Anbar province Deputy Gov. Faleh al-Essawi.
Amriyat al Falluja is about 30 kilometers (19 miles) south of Falluja.
At least six suicide bombings and over 70 mortar attacks targeting government forces were counted Wednesday, al-Essawi said. He said there are casualties on both sides, but the numbers were not immediately known.
