Fighting at Kobane intensifies

Salih Muslim Mohammed, who heads Syria's Democratic Union Party, has warned of "genocide" in Rojava, the word used by Kurds to describe Kurdish-majority areas in north and north-eastern Syria.

Mohammed was speaking via Skype to a conference being held in Washington DC entitled "The new Kurdish reality in the Middle East."

He had not been granted a visa to travel to the US to take part in the conference.

In his speech, he warned that a "massacre" had already begun in Kobane, the northern city on the border with Iraq known as Ayn al-Arab in Arabic.

He said that though there had been intense activity in the skies above Kobane, there had as yet been no airstrikes against IS in the area.

"We are open to everybody to co-ordinate and co-operate to defeat IS."

"We want a good relationship with the US and would like to convince them...to listen to us."