On Sunday, a female Kurdish fighter blew herself up rather than be captured by Islamic State after running out of ammunition, local sources and a monitoring group reported.

Islamic State militants have been battling Kurdish fighters for a month to take control of the town near the Turkish border, but stepped-up coalition air strikes have helped Kurds fend off the advance.

BEIRUT/MURSITPINAR, Turkey, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Syrian Kurds backed by fighters from northern Iraq have gained ground towards breaking the siege of the Syrian border town of Kobani but are drawing heavy fire from Islamic State insurgents and have yet to win back control.

Jubeir said the attack in Tehran was in line with what he said were earlier Iranian assaults on foreign embassies there and with Iranian policies of destabilising the region by creating "terrorist cells" in Saudi Arabia.

Kurdish forces have retaken some villages around Kobani but a Reuters correspondent on the Turkish side of the border said the front lines in the town itself appeared little changed, with the insurgents still controlling its eastern part.

Separately, state-run Anadolu Agency said Turkish jets hit four Islamic State positions late on Saturday evening in Syria's northwestern Aleppo province as part of the operation, citing security sources.

Welat Omer, a doctor caring for the few remaining civilians in Kobani, told Reuters by telephone that he was looking after 15 patients, including children and the elderly.

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By Daren Butler

istanbul escort, Sept 4 (Reuters) - Turkey will never allow the formation of an "artificial state" in northern Syria, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Sunday, referring to the U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters whose advance Ankara is now aiming to stop.

US-led coalition jets strike Kobani after Islamic State shelling

By Reuters

A black flag apparently belonging to the group was visible atop a four storey building close to the scene of some of the most intense clashes in recent days, television images shot from neighbouring Turkey showed.

Gulen has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999, when he left the country amid growing pressure from a then strongly secularist political establishment.

"We will never allow the formation of an artificial state in the north of Syria," Yildirim said in a speech in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, where he announced an investment programme to rebuild parts of the largely Kurdish region that have been destroyed by security operations.

"The government, which says it wants to stop ISIS (Islamic State) with the Jarablus invasion, has no credibility. The invasion of Jarablus is totally an adversarial approach against Kurds and we will never accept it," Selahattin Demirtas told reporters.

As parts of the media and academia decry what they say is an unprecedented crackdown, Umit, 55, a former Communist activist who was tortured during military rule, offers a blistering critique of modern Turkey through a fictional lens.