Kurdish female fighter in suicide attack on Islamic State

A female Kurdish fighter has reportedly carried out a suicide bomb attack against Islamic State forces while defending a key Syrian town on Sunday night.

The woman, named as Arin Mirkan, blew herself up at an ISIS position east of the town of Kobane, on the Turkish border, killing several jihadists who had surrounded the town, according to the British-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

It was the first reported instance of a female Kurdish fighter employing a tactic often used by the jihadists themselves.

The woman, in her 20s, was a full-time fighter with the People's Protection Units, a Syrian Kurdish rebel group that has a large number of women fighters.

Kurdish fighters, backed by US-led air strikes, repelled a fresh assault on Kobane on Sunday, killing at least 27 IS jihadists but losing 19 of their own fighters, the Observatory said.

One Syrian Kurdish official said IS fighters were just one kilometre from the town and that air strikes alone were not enough to stop them.