MURSITPINAR: Kurdish fighters supported by US-led air strikes held back militants attacking a Syrian border town on Saturday.

Dozens of militants of the Islamic State (IS) group, which has seized large parts of Syria and Iraq, were reported killed in the latest coalition raids.

The dusty Syrian town of Kobane on the Turkish border has become a key battleground between IS militants and their opponents, who include Kurdish fighters as well as airforce personnel from the United States and its allies.

The US military said four air strikes hit the Kobane area overnight.

Fighting raged on Saturday as IS militants attempted to seize a strategic hilltop that would give them access to the town, activists said.

Mortar rounds pounded the town as smoke rose above it, journalists on the Turkish side of the border said.

`The resistance is continuing. The danger has not yetbeen overcome,` Sebahat Tuncel, a Kurdish member of Turl(ey`s parliament, told reporters after visiting Kobane.

Five militants were killed in American air raids near the town, as well as 30 more around Shadadiinnorth-eastern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

IS militants fired at least 80 mortar rounds on Friday into Kobane, also known as Ain alArab.

The fighting killed at least 10 Kurdish militia members, saidthe Britain-based Observatory, which monitors the conflict.

But activist Mustafa Ebdi said Kurdish fighters had been buoyedby theirsuccess atholding offthe assaultsofar,noting that the jihadists had hoped to capture the town by Saturday for the Eidul Azha festival.

`So far they have failed to enter the town,` Ebdi said.

IS began its advance towards Kobane on September 16, seeking to cement its grip over a long stretch of the border.

It has prompted a mass exo-dus of residents from the town and the surrounding countryside, with some 186,000 fleeing into Turkey.

Syrian state media also reported coalition strikes on Saturday in Al-Quriyah in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, with a tank destroyed.

In neighbouring Iraq, unidentified gunmen killed 10 soldiers and Shia-allied militiamen in two separate attacks in Diyala province northeast of the capital Baghdad.

American bombers andfighter jets also carried out five air strikes against IS in Iraq, the US military said.

Washington is leading a coalition of nations against the jihadist organisation, which has declared a `caliphate` in parts ofSyria and Iraq.

Meanwhile, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan angrily rejected comments by US Vice President Joe Biden that Turkey and othersin the region had financed and armed militant organisations in Syria.

-AFP