Turkey denies ISIL bombers re-entered Syria's Kobane from its territory

Turkey on June 25 denied "baseless" claims that Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants reentered the Syrian town of Kobane through the Turkish border crossing to detonate a suicide bomb.

"The data we have prove that the organisation's members infiltrated into Kobane from Jarablus in Syria," the local governor's office in the border region of ?anl?urfa said in a statement.

The ISIL group launched a two-pronged offensive in northern Syria on June 25 after several setbacks, re-entering the symbolic battleground town of Kobane and seizing parts of the city of Hasakeh.
 

In southern Syria, an alliance of rebel groups, including Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front, also attacked government-held areas of the city of Daraa.
 
Analysts said the surprise ISIL assaults were aimed at diverting Kurdish forces after they scored a series of victories and advanced on the jihadists' Syrian stronghold of Raqa.
 
Kobane, on the border with Turkey, became an important symbol in the battle against ISIL after the group launched a bid to take it last year.
 
Kurdish forces backed by US-led air strikes waged a four-month battle to repel the group, finally securing the town in January.
 
But on June 25, the jihadists returned, detonating a suicide car bomb near the border crossing adjacent to Kobane as they launched an assault.
 
"Fierce clashes erupted afterwards in the centre of the town and there are bodies lying in the streets," said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor.
 
He said at least 12 civilians and Kurdish fighters had been killed in the car bomb and the subsequent fighting in the town, along with eight ISIL militants.
 
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