SYRIAN Kurds desperately defending Kobane against Islamic State (Isis) fanatics warned today that the enemy was “closing in” on remaining people’s protection units (YPGs).

Isis fighters already control a third of the city and have benefited from high-tech weapons seized in Iraq.

Authorities in the autonomous socialist Rojava region which contains Kobane have begun house-to-house visits to conscript young men.

A law introducing conscription was passed in July but people seeking to avoid enrolment have been going into hiding, prompting police to launch searches.

Liberal groups including the Coventry-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights have denounced the emergency measures.

“We call upon the civil administration to immediately release the detainees [conscripted men] without conditions and to abstain from such practices,” the Observatory stated.

But it did not address how Kobane was to defeat Isis, the forces of which are committing genocide in captured territory in Syria and Iraq.

Rojava official Ekrem Hasso said that authorities were “committed to implementing our laws.”

Despite repeated pleas for international assistance against the terrorist group, Kobane has been left to fend for itself, with neighbouring Turkey preventing Kurds from crossing the border to help defend it.

Ankara has launched a swathe of bombing raids against the Kurdish nationalist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in recent days, indicating that its priority remains crushing Kurdish aspirations of statehood rather than battling Isis.

Former deputy prime minister Emrullah Isler has openly declared his preference for the jihadists over the PKK, claiming dubiously that “Isis kills, but at least they don’t torture,” after a Turkish teenager died during clashes between Kurdish protesters and security forces last week.

The Turkish government has refused to co-operate with Syrian authorities in battling Isis, instead insisting on arming and training “moderate” rebels to fight both Isis and Bashar al-Assad’s government.

It continues the disastrous policy it has followed throughout the Syrian civil war, along the United States and others, which has let weapons flood into Isis’s hands as supposedly pro-Western rebels defect or sell their equipment to the extremists.