MURSITPINAR, Turkey - The US-led coalition carried out fresh airstrikes Monday against jihadists in Syria and Iraq as Washington called for the battle against the Islamic State group to be taken to the internet.
People watch as smokes rises from the town of Kobane, also known as Ain al-Arab, on October 26, 2014, at the Turkish border near the southeastern village of Mursitpinar
In Iraq, a car bomb explosion killed at least eight people in a Baghdad square after a suicide bombing reportedly left dead at least 14 pro-government fighters south of the capital.
A reporter in Turkey just across the border from Kobane said fierce clashes were raging in the strategic Syrian town, where Kurdish fighters have been holding off an IS offensive for weeks.
The US military said its warplanes carried out four more air strikes near Kobane on Sunday and Monday.
But there was no sign yet of promised reinforcements for the town's defenders, despite plans announced last week for Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces armed with heavy weapons to join them.
A senior Iraqi Kurdish official said the deployment was being held up by Turkey, which has agreed to allow the peshmerga to pass through its territory.
"We are ready to send them," said Mustafuz Qader, who heads the ministry responsible for the peshmerga.
"We are awaiting the stance of the state of Turkey and because of this have not sent any forces," he said, without elaborating.
Kobane has become a crucial symbol in the battle against IS, an extremist Sunni group that has seized large parts of Syria and Iraq, declared an Islamic "caliphate" and committed widespread atrocities.
Washington has forged an alliance of Western and Arab nations to combat the group and on Monday met with coalition partners in Kuwait City to boost efforts to counter the jihadists' online propaganda.
Retired US general John Allen, who is coordinating the US-led campaign against IS, said the group was promoting its "horrendous brand of warfare" online, where it "recruits and perverts the innocent".
"It is only when we contest ISIL's presence online, deny the legitimacy of the message it sends to vulnerable young people... it is only then that ISIL will truly be defeated," Allen said, using an alternative name for the group.
The coalition partners pledged to take steps to boost efforts to prevent the recruitment of foreign fighters for IS, including online.
Concern is growing over the group's online influence in attracting foreign fighters and promoting attacks by disaffected Muslims on Western targets.
The US military said the coalition had also carried out seven new strikes against IS in Iraq on Sunday and Monday, including near the key Mosul dam and southeast of the militant bastion of Fallujah.
Iraq has struggled to regain territory taken by IS in a lightning offensive in June, though it announced at the weekend that its forces had retaken the town of Jurf al-Sakhr south of Baghdad.
Sources said Monday a suicide bomber had subsequently detonated an explosives-rigged Humvee armoured vehicle near security forces and allied militiamen in the area, killing at least 14.
And a car bomb exploded in Baghdad's busy Wathiq Square on Monday night, killing at least eight people, officials said.
- Assault on Syrian city -
Syrian rebels were meanwhile reported to have launched a major assault on the government-held city of Idlib in a bid to consolidate their control over the country's northwest.
Rebels seized control of most of Idlib province early in Syria's three-and-a-half-year-old civil war but troops have held out in the provincial capital, resupplied by air.
Fighters of Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front and Islamist rebel units attacked the city from all sides from dawn, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Rebels made a previous attempt this year to take the city but Monday's assault was "the biggest since the beginning of the revolt" in 2011, said the Observatory's Rami Abdel Rahman.
The rise of IS has destabilised the region, including in Syria's neighbour Lebanon where weekend clashes killed at least 16 people and forced thousands to flee a neighbourhood of second city Tripoli.
Lebanese soldiers quelled Islamist militants in their Tripoli stronghold of Bab al-Tebbaneh and were in full control Monday, earning praise for their courage from the United Sates.
"We condemn those who seek to sow chaos in Lebanon and are confident that the Lebanese people will persevere if they stand united in the face of this threat," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.