Story highlights
- Kurdish Peshmerga forces have wrested control of Kobani away from ISIS
- The Syrian city has been a key target, in part because it sits on the Turkish border
(CNN)Walk through the streets of Kobani, and the devastation wrought by fighting ISIS is immeasurable.
Entire buildings reduced to heap of rubble. A hospital virtually obliterated. Shoes and clothes strewn throughout the debris, their owners nowhere to be found.
After four months of intense fighting, Kurdish Peshmerga forces have liberated the Syrian city from the grip of ISIS.
Their prize: utter devastation.
A crucial city
Kobani has been a coveted prize for ISIS, which has been on a murderous campaign to establish an Islamic state across parts of Syria and Iraq.
The city sits on the border with Turkey and would have given ISIS a complete swath of land between its self-declared capital in Raqqa, Syria, and Turkey.
And while there are many ISIS battlefields in both Syria and Iraq, Kobani is within sight from the Turkish border -- which means Western media and the world could see the magnitude of the fighting.
Photos: On the front lines in Kobani
Zehra, a 25-year-old Kurdish woman who lost her 8-month-old daughter due to a lung infection at a refugee camp, sits with her other daughter inside their home in Kobani, Syria, on Thursday, January 29. Her husband, a fighter from the People's Protection Units, or YPG, stands in the background. After four months of intense fighting, Kurdish Peshmerga forces have liberated Kobani from the grip of the ISIS militant group. Click through to see more photos of Kobani taken recently by Ricardo Garcia Vilanova.
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Photos: On the front lines in Kobani
Destruction in the center of Kobani on January 30. The city sits on the border with Turkey.
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Photos: On the front lines in Kobani
Photographs of civilians are seen on a street outside of a destroyed house on Saturday, January 31.
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Photos: On the front lines in Kobani
Members of the YPG prepare their ammunition on January 31.
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Photos: On the front lines in Kobani
Members of the YPG make their way to the front line of the battle with ISIS on January 31.
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Photos: On the front lines in Kobani
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Photos: On the front lines in Kobani
Ramue Dika, a civilian who died of starvation, is taken away from his house in Kobani on Monday, February 2.
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Photos: On the front lines in Kobani
Members of the Free Syrian Army gather in Kobani on February 2.
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Photos: On the front lines in Kobani
A Kurdish woman kneels beside the burial ground of her husband on Tuesday, February 3.
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Peshmerga forces wrestling for control of Kobani have received a boost from hundreds of U.S. and coalition airstrikes against ISIS. The strikes have hit terrorist targets, as well as buildings and houses.
Bittersweet homecomings
But after months of fighting ISIS, the Kobani area is now almost unrecognizable.
"They were advancing with heavy weapons, tanks, artillery, mortars, heavy weapons. They attacked us," said Bozane Shere, who is from a village just south of Kobani. "They attacked us. Then we took our cars and ran away."
Now, the city is no better than the village he left, he said.
ISIS fighters: Airstrikes behind Kobani withdrawal 01:03
Many civilians fled Kobani for refugee camps in less volatile areas when the fighting first started, but others could not flee -- or were forced by circumstance to return.
"My daughter recently died. We brought the (body) here," one woman said. "We said, we will not bury her in Turkey; we will bury her in Kobani, our own mud is much sweeter than other's homeland."
While there is barely anything left in Kobani, it's still home to people like Shere.
"I said I will not leave my city. I will stay here, and told my sons go wherever you want to go," he said. "But for me, I will stay here, and I will die on the Syrian land."
