It was our first day in a city under siege by ISIS.
We'd arrived during the night, smuggled in by Kurdish fighters.
SHELLING
It's 7:30 in the morning in Kobani
and the explosions have just been nonstop all morning.
It sounds like the Kurds are attacking
the ISIS positions in the east of the city.
'Kurdish forces were fighting house-to-house to save their city.
'Backing them up, planes from America and its Arab allies.'
SHELLING
Hardly a minute goes past when there isn't an explosion in the city,
or the sound of warplanes above us.
'ISIS had declared they would capture Kobani.
'America and the Kurds were determined to stop them.'
This must have been hit by coalition airstrikes.
God, look at that!
'Our Kurdish guides took us on a tour of the city.
'The Kurds controlled two thirds of Kobani.
'ISIS controlled the rest
'and most of the surrounding countryside.
'Their fighters were never more than half a mile away.'
There's ISIS sniper positions, which we can see exactly down this road
we need to cross to get back to safety.
Let's go!
GUNFIRE
SHELLING
There's been intense fighting here in the last few days.
These are ISIS tanks that have been destroyed by coalition airstrikes.
You can still smell the petrol coming out of them.
'On the edge of town, we found a makeshift cemetery.
'Kurdish fighters killed the day before were being buried.
'We were told hundreds of Kurds had already died.'
Even the children are called to come and help
carry breezeblocks to separate the graves.
This is something the whole community participates in,
burying their dead.
'There were about 1,000 Kurdish fighters in Kobani.
'Most days, they said, around five of them were killed.
'Jamila Mahmoud came to mourn her brother-in-law.'
He's here.
So, this week? He just died this week?
'Jamila said her husband, also a fighter,
'had been killed earlier in the siege.'
Why do you continue to stay living in Kobani
amidst all these explosions and all this bombing?
'Jamila's brother-in-law left behind seven children.'
'Once, 45,000 people lived here.
'A few thousand remained.'
SHELLING
'Our Kurdish guides told us ISIS were being pushed back.
'They showed us the streets they'd captured just days before.'
Kobani is a big town.
And this is just totally destroyed.
It seems endless.
The baby buggy abandoned in the street.
The whole front of this house has been completely...destroyed.
All their sleeping mats are all folded up.
We've been told anywhere ISIS left,
they left it rigged with booby-traps,
so we're not going to go any further into this house.
I just hope all the people who lived here got away
before all of this destruction started.
'We'd been told just one school remained open.'
It's down a steep flight of stairs.
We're right down in the basement.
This place feels like a bomb shelter.
Hello!
'Sharvin Mahmoud was teaching the children Kurdish,
'which was banned before the civil war,
'when this area was ruled by President Assad.'
CHILDREN PRONOUNCE LETTERS
'Many of the children came from families fighting ISIS.'
How are these children affected by the war?
'ISIS claims the Kurdish way of life is un-Islamic,
'and wants to drive them out of Syria.
'The children told us about the relatives they'd lost.'
AIRCRAFT OVERHEAD
'We were told ISIS reinforcements had arrived overnight.'
SHELLING (Oh! Let's go!)
A really loud explosion very close to us.
GUNFIRE
We really are in the middle of a pitched battle
between the Kurdish fighters and ISIS.
'Our guide, Perwer, brought troubling news.'
The situation is critical.
There is clashes east and south-east of Kobani
and the clashes are ongoing until this specific moment.
You can hear the voice of the bullets.
'The Kurds were worried they might be overwhelmed.'
We're on our way to the last remaining hospital in Kobani.
All the other medical centres in the town have been destroyed by ISIS.
'The clinic was full and the doctors were running out of drugs.
'Surgeon Basrawi Ali is from Kobani.
'He lived in the hospital, on call 24 hours a day.
'It was 10am and he'd been operating since dawn,
'treating fighters with complex injuries
'with just local anaesthetic.'
Can you tell us about the operation you did today?
BANGING
Normal! OK, what was that? Normal.
Is that...is that far away? That sounded really close.
THEY LAUGH
'20 minutes later, there was an influx of seriously-wounded people.'
The bang we heard in the operating room
was an ISIS car bomb detonating.
Now we've started to see casualties coming in from that attack.
HE MOANS
HE YELLS
Civilian casualties were coming in, as well as fighters.
There's an old man lying here
and there's a woman that they're just bringing in, as well.
The car bomb was detonated about half an hour ago now,
but they're still bringing people in.
It's impossible to get people here quickly
because there's no ambulances.
'The doctors told us ISIS attacks were often spearheaded
'by suicide car bombs like this one.
'Foot soldiers would then rush in to kill and take territory.'
SHELLING
'By nightfall, a combination of airstrikes
'and desperate fighting on the ground
'had held off the ISIS advance.
'The next day, we were able to explore the outskirts of town.'
We're going with the Kurdish Red Crescent to an area
where civilians have been camped out.
And they're taking them these medical supplies.
'All of these drugs were taken from bombed-out houses
'and abandoned chemists.'
There's lots of basic medicine for children
and all the simple things you'd find in a pharmacy.
'We were told delivering supplies was difficult.
'Kobani was running out of fuel and the road was dangerous.
'ISIS was targeting moving vehicles.
'On the edge of the city, right on the border,
'farmers from villages around Kobani
'were living in their cars and tractors.'
'These farmers don't want to lose the machinery
'they rely on for their livelihoods.
'The Turkish government won't let them
'bring their vehicles across the border.
'For now, they're stuck here.'
It stretches for miles along the border with Turkey
and there must be thousands of people living here.
They all come from villages south of Kobani
and they've been driven out by ISIS.
And now they're crammed up against the border with Turkey.
'They might have escaped the ISIS onslaught on their villages,
'but the jihadists are still very close.'
FAINT SHELLING
Just since we've got out here,
you can hear fighters in Kobani mortaring that village.
It's an ISIS-controlled village south of Kobani.
'Dr Manaf Kitkani was in charge of distribution.
'Every couple of days,
he made the hazardous journey to help these people.'
'In the last weeks of her pregnancy,
'Khadreh Kenno was reliant on the Red Crescent for medical support.'
Khadreh, how many of you sleep inside this truck?
Six? Mm.
'The vehicle they escaped ISIS in had become their home.'
Wouldn't it be safer for your family to cross the border into Turkey?
'Her baby was due any day.'
And what are you going to do at night? It's so bitterly cold here.
SHELLING
Ah, that's your baby bag.
Despite the extreme poverty that Khadreh's living in,
she's very excited to show me the stuff she's got ready for her baby.
The swaddling cloths, the little baby-gros.
It's all in here, all in her bag.
Ah, this is to wrap the baby.
She's got one lovely piece of white, clean cloth
ready to wrap her baby in.
Everything's damp, but everything's clean.
SHELLING
GUNFIRE
'That night, we met Beritan Judi, a 19-year-old fighter.'
How's it going?
'Two years ago, she was at school.
'About a third of the Kurdish frontline fighters here were women.'
How did today go?
How long do you think this war can go on for?
So, you're confident you can repel ISIS?
ISIS still held one key position -
the Mistenur Hill overlooking Kobani.
To regain their city, the Kurds had to take it back.
That morning, ISIS fighters launched mortars into the Kurdish-held area.
SHELLING
That was another really loud incoming-mortar round.
That was very, very close.
A piece of shrapnel just clinked off the roof, onto here.
SHELLING
Beritan was at her mortar post,
returning fire towards Mistenur Hill.
That shell is going straight to the ISIS position.
SHELLING
And that sounds like they're returning fire.
'Perwer, our guide, told us
'that having beaten off the ISIS counterattack,
'the Kurds were advancing.'
There's another open area here. We have to get low and move quickly.
'He wanted to take us towards the new frontline.'
ISIS, I think, may be 500-600 metres.
So we're only half a kilometre away
from where ISIS are still trying to take this area back.
The stench!
There's bodies there.
'In a school playground, we found the corpses of nine ISIS fighters.
'A schoolteacher, Ahmad,
'fought alongside his friends to kill them at close quarters.'
'The Kurds told us that papers found on the bodies
'suggested some of the ISIS fighters were Europeans.
'We couldn't verify their claims.'
We're moving through smashed holes through walls and houses,
so the fighters could move without being seen.
We met some of the fighters who'd just been in action.
Men and women who fought alongside each other.
SHE WHOOPS
'Viyan Mohammed is a teenage schoolgirl and a hardened soldier.'
We've heard that ISIS fighters
are especially scared of the female Kurdish fighters.
What do you think about that?
'Her two sisters were also fighters.'
FAINT SHELLING
On the 134th day of the siege...
SHELLING
..the Kurds made a decisive breakthrough.
Without these airstrikes, the Kurdish fighters
wouldn't have been able to push ISIS back.
This is the bottom of the Mistenur Hill,
which the Kurdish fighters have only just taken back from ISIS.
'But the battle for the hill wasn't over yet.'
SHELLING
Where are ISIS from here?
Right over the crest of this hill? From this side.
OK. So right over the back of this hill.
Right now, we are very, very close.
About 100 metres, this is ISIS position.
This is ISIS retreating? Yes, yes.
Are they firing as they retreat?
Yes, they are firing towards us. OK. Yeah.
Airstrikes. SHELLING
That's the sound of another coalition airstrike
very close to where we are right now.
Oh, look at that!
CAR HORNS BEEP
'The Kurds were pushing forward.'
OK, we're going to go further up the Mistenur Hill
in our armoured personnel carrier.
We're right here, at the top of the Mistenur Hill.
Only a few days ago, this was entirely controlled by ISIS.
SHELLING
This really is an incredibly strategic point.
I mean, you can see the whole city from here.
'From here, it was easy to see how ISIS had been able to control
'so much of Kobani, but now they were retreating.'
As you can hear, the battle still continues.
There's heavy fighting in that direction
and they're firing heavy machinegun over the hill
at ISIS positions on the other side.
'We spoke to some of the fighters who recaptured the hill.'
Deniz, can you tell me, what was the fighting like up here?
How long do you think it'll be before ISIS are defeated in Kobani?
How does it make you feel to be able to look over Kobani from up here?
'For the Kurds, this was a triumph.
'Proof that ISIS is not invincible.
'Yet it took four months of fighting
'and over 700 airstrikes
'to claw back this one tiny city.
'ISIS still controls large areas of Syria and Iraq.
'The refugees are still on the border.'
BABY WAILS
'A few days after the fighting in Kobani ended,
'Khadreh gave birth to a baby boy.'
'His name means life.'
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd