Siege of Kobanî

The siege of Kobanî was launched by the Islamic State (IS) on 13 September 2014, in order to capture the Kobanî Canton and its main city of Kobanî (also known as Kobanê or Ayn al-Arab) in northern Syria, in the de facto autonomous region of Rojava.

By 2 October 2014, IS succeeded in capturing 350 Kurdish villages and towns in the vicinity of Kobanê, generating a wave of some 300,000 Kurdish refugees, who fled across the border into Turkey's Şanlıurfa Province. By January 2015, the number had risen to 400,000. The Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) and some Free Syrian Army (FSA) factions (under the Euphrates Volcano joint operations room), Peshmerga of the Kurdistan Regional Government, and American and US-allied Arab militaries' airstrikes began to recapture Kobane.

On 26 January 2015, the YPG and its allies, backed by the continued US-led airstrikes, began to retake the city, driving IS into a steady retreat. The city of Kobanê was fully recaptured on 27 January; however, most of the remaining villages in the Kobanê Canton remained under IS control. The YPG and its allies then made rapid advances in rural Kobanî, with IS withdrawing 25 km from the city of Kobanî by 2 February. By late April 2015, IS had been driven out of almost all of the villages it had captured in the Canton, but maintained control of a few dozen villages it seized in the northwestern part of the Raqqa Governorate. In late June 2015, IS launched a new offensive against the city, killing at least 233 civilians, but were quickly driven back.

The battle for Kobanî was considered a turning point in the war against Islamic State. The siege was referred by some to be the "Kurdish Stalingrad".