Operation Featherweight: Month 3, Week 4, Day 7.

Today the Battle of Kobane entered its 50th day. This means that the fight for this small but strategically important city has now gone on for longer then the third longest war in Israel's entire history. It has also gone on for longer then four of the five Battles of Ypres in the first World War and the Battle of the Bulge in the second World War.

More importantly though it has now gone on 22 days longer then the entire French operation to expel Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) from an area of northern Mali five times larger then the territory currently occupied by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Sadly there seems to be precious little indication that the battle will be ending any time soon. Over the weekend the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) were able to withstand another big push by ISIL in the south of the city and even made small gains in the north of Kobane. However even with the support of the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga and their medium and heavy weapons it seems that the YPG do not yet have the strength to expel ISIL from Kobane and establish a defensive line around it. As a result today has been another quiet day of attrition with no large offensives being reported by either side. Unfortunately this type of attrition is always going to favour ISIL more than it does the YPG for the simple reason that for every fighter killed in Kobane ISIL can bring in two replacements while the YPG are not able to bring in any replacements due to the Turkish blockade of the city.

Amid continuing unconfirmed rumours of a second Peshmerga convoy on its way to Kobane there are signs that Turkey could be about to drop its de facto support for ISIL and allow Kobane to be given the resources it needs to properly defend itself. This cannot come a moment too soon because as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems keen to remind us the battle for Kobane is far from the be and end all of the war against ISIL.

Back in Iraq where the US-led coalition began its operations almost three months ago the Yazidis who are ethnic Kurds continue to be threatened by ISIL in the towns of Zumar and Shingal which sit between the city of Mosul and the now infamous Sinjar Mountains. However because the Peshmerga are permitted to operate freely within this area they have been able to bring in reinforcements to retake Zumar and are beginning to mount operations to liberate Shingal. Today we were given yet another reminder of ISIL's brutality when in the city of Mosul they executed 4 of 12 journalists who were abducted last month. You may remember that back towards the end of September the Peshmerga were poised to mount an operation to liberate Mosul only for support to fall away as the US-led coalition decided to start randomly bombing Syria instead.

ISIL's appalling behaviour has continued in Iraq's western Anbar. During Saturday (1/11/14) and Sunday (2/11/14) they massacred 322 members of the Sunni Al-Bu Nimr tribe in the village of Ras al-Maa and took a further 65 of the tribe's elders hostage. The tribes only crime seems to have been choosing to side with the Iraq government over ISIL. Of the dead 50 bodies were recovered from a well which they appear to have been thrown into alive. However looking at the price lists of Yazidi women kidnapped from Shingal that ISIL have started circulating you can't help but feel that the dead got off lightly.

The village of Ras al-Maa sits just to the north of the city of Ramadi which sits 100km (60 miles) to the west of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. The Al-Bu Nimr tribe had fled there from Hit which sits 55km (33 miles) north-west of Ramadi. At the end of September Hit was under the control of the Iraqi army and the Iraqi army had just launched a major operation to liberate Ramadi from ISIL. Unfortunately that operation failed as coalition air-power suddenly disappeared.

In slightly better news Canada has finally been able to conduct its first air-strikes against ISIL as part of that US-led coalition. Although it is yet to be officially confirmed it is understood that on Sunday 2 Canadian F-18 jets dropped 4 Paveway-type bombs close to Fallujah - 50km (30 miles) between Baghdad and Ramadi - destroying 6 ISIL construction vehicles which are used to build defensive positions. Sadly though until the coalition devises a strategy to defeat ISIL and creates a central command structure to execute that strategy I think those strikes will have little more then symbolic value.

Of course the main barrier to setting up effective coalition air operations continues to be Turkey's refusal to allow Incrlik airbase to be used in the fight against ISIL.

18:00 on 4/11/14 (UK date).