Mursitpinar, Turkey-Syria border: The shutters were closed tight at shops and businesses all over the Turkish city of Suruc on Thursday as the mostly Kurdish population gathered to mourn those who died fighting to save Kobane.

Just six kilometres from Syria, the usually sleepy Suruc has absorbed the waves of refugees who have flooded across the border since the Islamic State began its assault on Kobane, filling parks, schools, mosques and makeshift refugee camps.

But more than three weeks into the IS assault, the mood of the town is changing.

At least 11 people from Suruc died in Kobane fighting with the Kurdish YPG forces on Wednesday, local resident Apo Dogan said, and the businesses were closed out of respect for families reeling from their loss.

Between 200 and 300 young men from Suruc have gone to Kobane to fight in the last month, another local says, adding:  "We are not sure how many will come home."

But reports from inside the stricken town indicate two days of sustained air strikes carried out by the US-led military coalition may have given the Kurdish YPG forces the boost they needed to re-take some ground from Islamic State fighters.

"Only about 20 per cent of the town is under the control of the Islamic State," a commander inside Kobane estimated late on Thursday, as another air strike appeared to hit an IS artillery position. "We are still without the heavy weapons we need to defeat them but we have made progress."

The Islamic State onslaught has forced up to 200,000 refugees to flee Kobane, and they are crammed into every vacant building across Suruc.

Brightly coloured clothes strung across a half-finished apartment block are often the first indication people are living in amongst one of the wall-less, windowless buildings around town.

With their meagre possessions set up along one of the walls and several small carpets spread over the uneven dirt ground, at least 65 people have taken shelter here and in many other incomplete buildings around the city.

A few hundred metres down the road, an open roller door reveals another extended family of around 50 people living on the unfinished ground floor of a three-storey apartment block.

The owners of the building, Zeliha Eroglu and her husband Abo have given over all but one floor of the block to refugees in an act of incredible kindness.

"From the first day of the war we have opened our homes to people," says Zeliha, 50. "They are not our family, we have not ever met them before, but they just kept coming and we knew we must help."

"We could not sleep in our beds when we knew they were sleeping on the street, we knew so many were homeless."

In her brother's house nearby, another 20 refugees from Kobane have also found shelter, she says.

"It is our obligation to help our brothers from Kobane, this is what we give from our hearts," her 27-year-old son Ali says. "Every day we make a huge pot of soup for the families in our house and we provide them with whatever other food we can."

This is not a wealthy family – when Fairfax Media visits, Ali's father, his four brothers and several nephews are working in the fields at a nearby farm.

The struggling economy of Suruc has been overwhelmed as the influx of refugees pushes up the price of everyday goods. Zeliha says a kilo of tomatoes that once cost 1 Turkish lira (50¢) now costs 3 lira.

And while they are worried about the increasingly crowded situation in Suruc, it is the desperate fight to save Kobane that is foremost on their minds.

The family has three young men fighting with the YPG forces and they are starved of news from the frontline.

Isra Ramdan is one of the more than 50 people living in the Eroglu's home with her family, where she has been sheltering for the past 22 days in a first-floor flat.

"The militants destroyed my brother's house, we lost absolutely everything," the 41-year old says.  "We are so thankful for the hospitality [of the Eroglu family] but all we want to do is go back to Kobane so we can start again."