A second flag was planted on a small hill further out of the town, which sits on the border of Syria and Turkey, as IS fighters pounded Kobane with tank shells and the exchange of gunfire grew more intense.

As the situation became more desperate, there were reports from the nearby Turkish town of Suruc that public announcements were being broadcast over loud speakers asking for any men of fighting age to join in the defence of Kobane. It is unclear how far they will get, given the heavy presence of Turkish soldiers stationed along the border.

Turkish military had clearly increased their presence in the area on Monday, locking down many of the small country roads nearby and positioning a long line of tanks on a hill overlooking the border.

They have taken an aggressive stance against the Kurdish protesters and onlookers who have come to show their support for those fighting to save Kobane, regularly clearing any gatherings with a ferocious barrage of tear gas and a water cannon.

For the crowds of Kurds gathered on the hills overlooking the border and along the roadside leading up to it, there is the feeling of utter helplessness as each tank shell lands with a boom closer into the centre of town.

"We are standing here watching people dying," Hussein Icin, 41, said. "The city is burning and we can do nothing."

Another man, Faisal Mohamed, stood quietly on the edge of the mostly subdued crowd, putting his hands over his face as each shell landed.

"We can see it, but we do not really know what is happening in Kobane, and the uncertainty is very, very difficult to endure," he said.

At the small local hospital in Suruc, exhausted medical staff and volunteers waved another ambulance off – it was carrying four seriously injured Kurdish fighters to a larger hospital in Urfa or Gaziantep, a doctor said.

"Anyone who actually makes it out of Kobane and into Suruc is generally in a very serious condition," he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

A commander from the Kurdish YPG militia fighting inside Kobane, Ismet Sheikh Hassan, said the Islamic State flags were just for show and the militants had yet to make it into the town.

He issued a desperate plea for international assistance, saying while there had been several US air strikes over the past few days, they had done little to halt the IS advance.

"Please show the whole world … we are fighting with a very strong organisation and we need help," he said by phone from Kobane. "We would prefer to die than to leave Kobane."

IS militants have been attacking the town for three weeks, after taking dozens of villages in the surrounding area, forcing more than 160,000 refugees to flee into Turkey.

Hundreds of Kurds – mostly men – continued to leave Kobane as reports emerged that the YPG forces were trying to evacuate the remaining civilians from the town in preparation for what could be a final, bloody, street-by-street battle with Islamic State militants.

If the Islamic State takes Kobane, it will give it control of a large swath of land along the Turkish-Syrian border and for 300 kilometres down to Raqqa and Deir al-Zor, adding to the significant areas, including the cities of Mosul and Tikrit, it already controls in northern Iraq.

Journalists have also been targeted in the Turkish military's determination to control what the world is seeing of the siege of Kobane, where neither the Turkish government nor the international coalition appear to be providing meaningful support to Kurdish forces fighting the IS onslaught.

Fairfax Media was caught up in one of the military's violent dispersals on Sunday and had to flee as soldiers fired a tear gas canister directly at our car, while a BBC car briefly caught fire when a canister smashed through their window.

All the while, just one to two kilometres away, the extremist Sunni militants were drawing ever closer to the centre of Kobane.