Had the enemy sniper aimed any higher, Marghas Magharen might not have escaped Kobane's inferno.

Like hundreds of other injured Kurdish fighters, the 17-year-old is now recovering in a hospital across the Syrian border with Turkey.

“I was hit in the leg and taken to a field hospital in Kobane. I stayed there for a week and then an ambulance brought me here to get surgery,” Magharen told FRANCE 24’s reporters at the border.

For over a month, Kurdish forces in the city of Kobane have fought off a bloody offensive by members of the so-called Islamic State group.

Outgunned and outnumbered, the fighters of the People's Protection Units (YPG) have defied the odds to defend the Syrian border city, which has been all but surrounded by the heavily armed jihadists.

Hundreds of thousands of Kurdish civilians have already fled to neighbouring Turkey, but for the fighters left behind there is now only one route left across the border.

So far, ambulances have been using this road to rush wounded fighters from Kobane to the nearest Turkish hospital.

But doctors say more lives could be saved if Turkish medical volunteers were allowed to cross the border and tend to the injured inside Kobane.

“We've got teams of volunteers ready to go to Kobane if a humanitarian corridor opens up,” says Fikret Cala, a first-aid worker.

Yet, despite mounting international pressure, the government in Ankara has refused to open its border with Syria.

Turkey, which has a large Kurdish population, is deeply suspicious of attempts to create an autonomous Kurdish entity in Syria.

As a result, Turkish tanks have sat idle along the border, refusing to intervene in support of Kobane.

Meanwhile, over at the hospital, Magharen is itching to return to battle as soon as he gets rid of his crutches.

But that is another thing Turkey is unlikely to allow.

France24