"It is not an all-out battle now," Cantlie says in the five-and-a-half-minute propaganda-style video. "It is nearly over."
Aerial
footage shot from a drone shows Kobani decimated from fighting between
the Islamic State group and pro-Syrian forces and by air strikes on IS
strongholds by a U.S.-led coalition.
“For
a month now the soldiers of the Islamic State have been besieging this
key Kurdish city," Cantlie says in the video, released on social media
channels by the militant group. "And despite American air strikes which
have cost nearly half a billion dollars in total, the mujahadeen have
pushed deep into the city. They now control the eastern and southern
sectors.
"Now the battle for
Kobani is coming to an end," Cantlie continues. "The mujahedeen are just
mopping up now, street to street, and building to building."
Earlier
this month, the United Nations warned that it would be a “humanitarian
catastrophe” if Kobani were to fall into the hands of the Islamic State.
Last week, the militant group said it had seized an American airdrop of
supplies and weapons near Kobani. U.S. officials said they were looking
into those claims.
“The
mujahedeen are being resupplied by the hopeless United States Air Force
who parachuted two crates of weapons and ammunition into the
outstretched arms of the mujahedeen,” Cantlie says. “All I’ve see here
inside the city of Kobani is mujahedeen. There are no YPG [Syrian
Kurdistan army], PKK [Kurdistan Workers' Party] or peshmerga in sight.
Just a large number of Islamic State mujahedeen, and they are definitely
not on the run.”
Turkey, which has been reluctant to join the U.S.-led coalition, told Reuters on Monday
that Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga were free to move through Turkey to Syria
despite reports of a stalled agreement between Turkey and the YPG.
Cantlie,
a war photographer and correspondent, was kidnapped in Syria with James
Foley in November 2012. Foley was executed in August.
Cantlie has appeared in at least five Islamic State propaganda videos since his capture.
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