The city of Kobani sits near the Turkish border and would give ISIS a complete swath of land between its self-declared capital of Raqqa, Syria, and Turkey — a stretch of more than 100 kilometers (62 miles).

“We are afraid of this. We are obliged to defend our home, our town,” Kurdish Kobani official Idriss Nassan said. “We didn’t choose this war, but we are obliged to fight.”

Members of the Kurdish People’s Protection Unit, called YPG, and other groups defending the city couldn’t move overnight because of ISIS snipers equipped with night vision equipment, a fighter inside the city told CNN.