Jihadists have fought their way into central Kobane in heavy clashes with the Syrian border town's Kurdish defenders, ahead of a Washington meeting of the US-led coalition against the Islamic State group.
The breakthrough on Monday gave IS half of Kobane, nearly a month after the Sunni extremists began their assault on the town on the Turkish frontier, despite more than three weeks of US-led air strikes in Syria aimed at stopping them.
That failure will be among the main points up for discussion in Tuesday's meeting in Washington of military chiefs from the 21 countries in the US-led coalition, as will Turkey's call for the establishment of a protective buffer zone.
In their latest air strikes, American and Saudi warplanes targeted seven sites around Kobane, the US military said, including IS staging posts used in its bid to cut the town off from the outside world.
A Kobane politician who is now a refugee said IS fighters had surrounded Kobane to the south, east and west, and warned of a "massacre" if they take the northern front bordering Turkey.
Fighting spread to less than a kilometre from the barbed wire frontier fence, with the jihadists carrying out three suicide car bomb attacks in the border zone, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Kobane has become a highly visible symbol of resistance to IS and its fall would give the jihadists control of a long stretch of the Turkey-Syria border.
But concern has also been growing over Iraq, where IS fighters have been threatening to seize more territory.
Iraqi forces are reported to be under intensifying pressure in Anbar province between Baghdad and the Syrian border, where a roadside bomb killed the police chief on Sunday.
On Monday, security sources said Iraqi government troops stationed on the edge of the city of Heet in Anbar had withdrawn to another base, leaving the city under full jihadist control.
Pro-government forces have also been in trouble south of IS-held Mosul around Baiji oil refinery, where US aircraft on Sunday for the first time dropped supplies, including food, water and ammunition, to Iraqi troops.
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