ISIS Prisoner John Cantlie from Kobane: The Islamic State Has Nearly Taken the City

Following are excerpts from an ISIS video featuring a "report from the city of Kobane" by John Cantlie, a British journalist captured by ISIS, which was posted on the Internet on October 27, 2014:

"Inside 'Ayn Al-Islam [Kobane]"

Images of Kobane from the air taken by "Drone of the Islamic State Army"

A close up image of a "Turkish Grain Silo"

Gunshots are heard in the background

John Cantlie: Hello, I am John Cantlie, and today, we are in the city of Kobane on the Syrian-Turkish border - that is, in fact, Turkey, right behind me. We are here in the heart of the so-called PKK safe zone, which is now controlled entirely by the Islamic State.

For a month now, the soldiers of the Islamic State have been besieging this key Kurdish city. Despite continual American airstrikes, which, so far, have cost half a billion dollars in total, the mujahideen have pushed deep into the heart of the city. They now control the eastern and southern sectors.

Now, the Western media - and I cannot see any of their journalists here, in the city of Kobane – have been saying recently that the Islamic State are on the retreat. "In the last 48 hours, hundreds of Islamic State militants have been reportedly killed in airstrikes," said the IB Times on the 16th of October. "We know we've killed several hundred of them," said John Kirby, the Pentagon official. "The Islamic State is retreating from the Syrian city of Kobane," said the BBC on October the 17th. While Patrick Cockburn said in the Independent that despite suffering serious losses, the Islamic State was continuing its assault on the city.

This is all quite a turn-around from earlier in the month, when U.S. officials were saying, and I quote: "The strategically unimportant city of Kobane was going to fall into mujahideen hands in just a matter of time" "It is going to be difficult, with just airpower, to prevent the Islamic State from taking the town," said U.S. National Security Advisor Tony Blinken, on the tenth of October.

Good old John Kerry doesn't seem to think the mujahideen are retreating. He called Kobane: "a horrible example of the unwillingness of people to help those who are fighting the Islamic State." That is a dig at Kurd-hating Turkish Preisdent Erdoğan.

But the point is, from where I am standing, right now, I can see large swaths of the city. I can even see the Turkish flag behind me.

All I have seen here, in the city of Kobane is mujahideen. There are no YPG, PKK, or Peshmurga in sight, just a large number of Islamic State mujahideen and they are definitely not on the run.

Without any safe access, there are no journalists here in the city, so the media are getting their information from Kurdish commanders and White House press secretaries, neither of whom have the slightest intention of telling the truth of what is happening here, on the ground.

Now, airstrikes did prevent some groups of mujahideen from using their tanks and heavy armor as they would have liked. So they are entering the city and using light weapons instead, going house to house.

Now, America is very keen for Kobane to become a symbol of victory of the coalition that is working together to defeat the Islamic State, but they know and the mujahideen also know, that even with all their airpower and all the proxy troops on the ground – even this is not enough to defeat the Islamic State, here in Kobane and elsewhere.

Kobane is now being reinforced by Iraqi Kurds who are coming through Turkey, while the mujahideen are being resupplied by the hopeless United States Airforce who parachuted two crates of weapons and ammunition straight into the outstretched arms of the mujahideen. But the battle for Kobane has come to an end. The mujahideen are just mopping up now, street to street and building to building. You can occasionally hear sporadic gunfire in the background as a result of those operations, but contrary to what the western media would have you believe, it is not an all-out battle here now. It is nearly over, as you can hear, it is very quiet, just occasional gunfire.

200,000 inhabitants of the city have been displaced because of the fighting that came here. You can see the refugee camps over my right shoulder, over there, in Turkey, where the inhabitants now are. But contrary to media reports the fighting in Kubane is nearly over.

Urban warfare is about as nasty and tough as it gets and it is something of a specialty of the mujahideen.

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