* Fresh clashes on edge of town
* Airstrikes appear to have slowed IS advance
* Turkey swept by deadly protests
* U.S. frustration at Turkish inaction
By Daren Butler and Jonny Hogg
MURSITPINAR, Turkey/ANKARA, Oct 8 (Reuters) - U.S.-led air
strikes on Wednesday 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 become the focus of international attention
since the Islamists' advance drove 180,000 of the area's mostly
Kurdish inhabitants to flee into adjoining Turkey, which has
infuriated its own restive Kurdish minority -- and its NATO
partners in Washington -- by refusing to intervene.
Islamic State hoisted its black flag on the eastern edge of
the town on Monday but, since then, air strikes have redoubled
by a U.S.-led coalition that includes Gulf states seeking to
reverse the jihadists' dramatic advance across northern Syria
and Iraq.
Intense gunfire could be heard on Wednesday morning from
across the Turkish border.
"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 Kobani district, told Reuters by
phone.
"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.
TURKISH TANKS
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 demanding to know why the Turkish tanks lined up within
sight of Kobani had not rolled across the frontier.
However, many Turks outside the southeast think it is far
better to risk alienating the Kurds than be sucked into a ground
war in Syria.
At least 12 people died and dozens more were injured on
Tuesday as sympathisers of the outlawed Kurdish PKK militant
group clashed with police and Islamists in towns and cities
across Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast as well as in
Istanbul and Ankara.
Authorities imposed curfews in five southeastern provinces
and sent troops and tanks onto the streets of Diyarbakir, the
largest Kurdish city in the region, to try to quell the unrest.
"We are here to protest too. This is repression, this is an
insult to the Kurdish people," said Ibrahim Oba, 54, who had
travelled to the border near Kobani to join protests against
Turkish inaction.
"If Turkey had intervened, this would not have happened, but
they are just watching."
An unnamed senior U.S. official told the New York Times on
Tuesday that there was "growing angst about Turkey dragging its
feet to act to prevent a massacre less than a mile from its
border".
"This isn't how a NATO ally acts while hell is unfolding a
stone's throw from their border," the official said.
While taking in Kobani's refugees and treating its wounded,
Turkey -- which has the second largest army in NATO -- has deep
reservations about military intervention.
LIST OF CONDITIONS
Beyond becoming a target for Islamic State, which is active
along much of Syria's border with Turkey, it fears being sucked
into Syria's complex civil war and perhaps even having to fight
the forces of its declared enemy, President Bashar al-Assad.
With this in mind, President Tayyip Erdogan has set
stringent conditions for Turkey to contemplate attacking Islamic
State on Syrian sovereign territory.
On Tuesday, he reiterated those demands: the enforcement of
a 'no-fly zone' over Syria near Turkey's border; the creation of
a safe zone inside Syria to enable an estimated 1.2 million
refugees currently in Turkey to return; and the arming of
moderate opposition groups to help topple Assad.
Ankara said on Tuesday that it had, however, urged the
United States to step up air strikes against Islamic State to
hold up its advance on Kobani.
Abdullah Ocalan, jailed leader of the PKK, last week said a
massacre of Kurds in Kobani would doom a fragile peace process
with the Turkish authorities aimed at ending the group's 30-year
fight for more autonomy, in which around 40,000 people have been
killed.
The street protests across Turkey were already making the
prospect of reconciliation with nationalists seem more remote,
as protesters set fire to Turkish flags and attacked statues of
the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Selahattin Demirtas, co-chair of the HDP, Turkey's leading
Kurdish party, condemned those acts, calling them "provocations
carried out to prevent help coming to the east (Kobani) from the
west".
(Reporting by Daren Butler, Humeyra Pamuk in Turkey and
Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman; writing by Jonny Hogg; Editing by
Kevin Liffey)
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