With the exception of a few birds defying the sweltering midday heat, all is quiet on the front, with Kurdish fighters cowering in the shade of the cliffs. Suddenly, sentence fragments from Friday prayers can be heard on the banks of the Euphrates River. "Gather together ... smash the traitors of the faith!" The words from the preacher, distorted by the amplifiers so loved by the jihadists, sound almost spooky.
Down along the river, the jihadists with the Islamic State (IS) gather together for the next attack. A few hundred meters above on the sparse, sun-drenched hills, the Kurds are sitting, feeling like they've somehow ended up on the set of a horror film.
"What do they want from us," asks one young fighter who only a few weeks ago still worked as a cashier in a supermarket. "These madmen keep on attacking and they continue to come at us even after they've been shot. I hit one of them twice. He only stopped after he was shot in the head. They're insane. They come here to die." » | Katrin Kuntz and Christoph Reuter | Monday, August 11, 2014
