The Kurdish community watched with growing dismay from a hilltop above the fighting as their fellow Kurds battled alone to see off the jihadists from the Islamic State (IS) group threatening their border community. FRANCE 24 reports.

They sang songs at the top of their lungs, hoping they would reach the ears of the fighters defending Kurdish homes and villages. But they could do little else.

Efforts to join their comrades have been repeatedly thwarted by Turkish soldiers at the border, with Ankara aiming to maintain a questionable neutrality in the conflict.

The disheartened Kurdish activists also wondered why coalition warplanes had not yet struck IS positions in their region, as it has in other places in Syria and Iraq.

France24