U.S. war planes strike Qaeda militants in Syrian border town - group

U.S. air strikes on a Syrian border town with Turkey killed at least two militants from Nusra Front, in the fourth such attack against the al Qaeda affiliate group since September, a monitoring group and Syrian activists said on Thursday.         

The U.S. military said in a statement on Wednesday the strikes, which a monitoring group and several activists said took place late on Tuesday, destroyed a "storage facility run by veteran al Qaeda operatives" known as The Khorasan Group, whose members Washington says are plotting external attacks against the United States.         

Rami Abdul Rahman, who runs the Britain-based Syrian Observatory monitoring group that tracks violence across the country, said the strike killed at least two fighters from the Nusra Front. There was no evidence it killed any senior members of the group or any of the Khorasan group network.       

Two residents near the rural border area of Harem in Idlib province said at least six civilians including two women and a child were injured in a residential house close to the house hit by the U.S. strike.          

Khorasan is the Islamic term for an area including parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, where al Qaeda council is believed to be in hiding. Khorasan is believed to be a foreign fighter cell in the Nusra Front, al Qaeda official Syria wing.  

Turning to Kobani, smoke could be seen rising above the embattled town on Thursday (November 20), following a coalition air strike targeting Islamic States (IS) militants who have besieged the border town.     

The U.S.-led coalition has been targeting IS fighters in Kobani for more than a month.    

Loud explosions were heard and gunfire rang out near the Turkish border with Syria as clouds of smoke filled the sky over the embattled town.       

Kobani has been encircled by the Sunni Muslim insurgents for more than two months.      

Weeks of U.S.-led air strikes have failed to break their stranglehold.         

Some 150 Iraqi peshmerga fighters are helping to defend Kobani.     

The President of Iraqi Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani, accused Western countries on Wednesday (November 19), of not providing enough heavy weapons to help his 'peshmerga' forces deliver a "decisive blow" against Islamic State militants.        

Islamic State (IS) has caused international alarm by capturing large expanses of Iraq and Syria and declaring an Islamic "caliphate" that extends across the border between the two countries.      

France, Britain, Germany and others have begun arming the Kurds, whose Soviet-era weaponry has proved ineffective against insurgents flush with hardware plundered from the Iraqi army after it abandoned its posts in June.