ISIS sustain heavy losses in Kobane

Jihadists from the Islamic State group battling for control of the Syrian border town Kobane have suffered some of their heaviest losses yet in 24 hours of clashes and US-led strikes.

At least 50 jihadists were killed in the embattled town, in suicide bomb attacks, clashes with Kobane's Kurdish defenders and the air strikes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday.

The Britain-based monitor also reported that the US-led coalition battling the ISIS group hit at least 30 targets in and around Raqa, the jihadists' de facto capital.

There were no immediate details of a toll in the Raqa strikes, which the Observatory said was one of the larger waves of raids by the coalition since it began its campaign in Syria in September.

The deaths in Kobane came on Saturday after ISIS jihadists launched an unprecedented attack against the border crossing separating the Syrian Kurdish town from Turkey.

Kurdish officials and the Observatory alleged the attack was launched from Turkish soil, a claim dismissed by the Turkey army as "lies."

In Raqa province, the US-led coalition carried out strikes against at least 30 IS targets on the northern outskirts of Raqa city and struck Division 17, a Syrian army base jihadists captured earlier this year.

The US-led coalition began carrying out air strikes against the Islamic State group on September 23, and stepped up raids in Kobane in a bid to prevent it falling to ISIS.

On Thursday, the coordinator of the US-led coalition, said at least 600 ISIS fighters had been killed in air strikes and that the group had made easy targets of its fighters by pouring them into Kobane.

But Syria's Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, speaking from Russia after meeting with key regime ally President Vladimir Putin, said the US-led strikes were having little effect.

"Is Daesh weaker today after two months of coalition strikes? All the indicators show that it is not," he told the pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen news channel.

He said unless Turkey closed its border to jihadists, the group would be unharmed by the US-led strikes.