ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces' (SDF) political wing on Monday condemned an ongoing siege that has suffocated the Kurdish-majority city of Kobane in Rojava (northeast Syria), calling it a "war crime," and urging Damascus to lift the blockade. 

The symbolic city of Kobane has been placed under a siege by forces affiliated with the Syrian transitional government since mid-January, as part of a broader Damascus campaign to weaken the foothold of Kurdish-led forces in Rojava.

Despite the SDF and Damascus reaching a ceasefire and integration agreement, the move has done little for Kobane, with an SDF official confirming to The New Region on Sunday that the siege has continued despite the truce.

"For over three weeks, the city of Kobane has been under a suffocating siege targeting more than half a million people, including its original inhabitants and displaced persons who sought refuge there from Afrin, Sheikh Maqsoud, Ashrafiyeh, Tabqa, Raqqa, and its surrounding countryside," the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), the SDF's political wing, said in a statement on Monday.

The statement added that the blockade has been accompanied by a "systematic cutting off of electricity and water, and a ban on the entry of medical supplies, food, fuel, and other basic necessities, leading to a severe deterioration in the overall humanitarian and health situation."

The siege on Kobane has led to the deaths of at least five children due to the severe cold and lack of medicine. Intense shelling has killed and injured several others.

Earlier in January, the Syrian Arab Army and its affiliated factions launched a violent military campaign on Rojava in a bid to secure interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s vision of a centralized Syria, killing hundreds of Kurdish-led fighters and civilians in the process.

The SDF's political wing said that "health centers are running out of medicine and medical equipment. Most shops have closed after running out of stock, and daily life has become a struggle for survival," claiming that the situation "by all standards, amounts to a war crime and collective punishment."

The council said that it considers the situation a "crime against himanity." 

The city of Kobane is a symbol for its heroic fight against the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014, which saw the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) – supported by Kurds from Kurdish-majority southeast Turkey and the Kurdistan Region’s Peshmerga forces – push back a last advance by jihadists against a pocket of resistance left in the city. 

The UN has reported deteriorating humanitarian conditions in the city, with its refugee affairs branch, UNHCR, dispatching a convoy of 24 trucks towards the city, carrying food, relief supplies, and diesel to provide life-saving winter assistance.

The SDC urged the UN, the Security Council, and international humanitarian organizations to send investigative committees to the besieged city, open humanitarian corridors, and "classify these events as crimes that warrant international accountability, rather than merely issuing statements and declarations."