“Kobane city deserves to be served in the best way because it did a great thing by defeating ISIS,” Faris Eti, mayor of Kobane, told Rudaw English on Friday. The clock tower is “a symbol of the resistance of Kobane and we will do everything to complete it, even if we fall into debt.”
In 2014, ISIS militants controlled swathes of Syrian and Iraqi territories. In mid-September that year, ISIS began laying siege to Kobane, taking village after village as they slowly tightened a noose around the city. Thousands of civilians fled across the border to Turkey.
With the help of the US-led Global Coalition against ISIS and Peshmerga forces from the Kurdistan Region, the People’s Protection Units (YPG) defeated ISIS militants in the city in January 2015 and the surrounding areas in the following weeks.
This was the first major military defeat of ISIS and Kobane made headlines around the world, becoming a symbol of victory over the terror group.
The weeks of battles left some 70 percent of the city destroyed. The local population and authorities have slowly brought life back to the city, reconstructing houses and roads and restoring basic services.
The 26-metre high clock tower is visible from all corners of the city. Eti said construction should be completed in one or two weeks. All the materials for the tower are locally sourced, though the clock itself has been imported from Germany.
The city has a history of revolution. It was here that the Kurds of northeastern Syria first declared their opposition to the regime of Bashar al-Assad on July 19, 2012 and the Rojava Revolution was born.
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