'If I could fight Isis, I'd go tomorrow. But I'm British and we must obey the law' – Hull's Kurdish community on battle against Islamic State

It's Spring Bank on Thursday morning and seemingly from nowhere a noisy band of almost 200 protesters comes marching down the pavement waving placards and chanting.

The sight is met with a combination of casual interest and curiosity. People in flats, shops and offices peer out of windows while some passing pedestrians pause to take pictures with mobile phones.

The flags being waved aren't familiar; green, white and red bands with a blazing sun in the centre. But the four letter slogan on some placards is instantly recognisable – "Isis".

The demonstrators are ethnic Kurds from Hull. Their protest, hastily agreed with police just a couple of hours earlier, is to highlight the plight of their families as they fight to keep back the barbaric, beheading legions of Islamic State, known as Isil or Isis, now closing on their cities, towns and villages.

In Queens Gardens the protesters hold a small rally. Their posters say "Save Kobane" and "Stop Isis". They disperse peacefully, their point having been made.

A couple of hours later and two of the organisers have returned to Spring Bank to the Kurdistan Restaurant to explain what they hoped to achieve.

Smartly dressed with a small Kurdistan pin badge, Amanj Jamil, 39, works at Hull's private Spire Hospital while Davan Yahya Khalil, 40, is a published author on Kurdish history.

Amanj says he had been planning a demonstration for weeks. Eventually, after seeing the Isis onslaught into the Kurdish town of Kobane on the Syrian Turkey border, the frustration and helplessness became too much.

"People were asking me 'when are we doing this, when'? " he says. "Every day we watch and it is getting worse. Every day two or three hundred people are dying at the hands of Isis. I phoned Humberside Police and they said we should have given them seven days notice but I asked and they agreed we could hold it in two hours. I am very grateful to the police."

For Amanj and scores of other ethnic Kurds living in Hull, the struggle in the deserts of their ancestral home is brought home to them on a daily basis. As well as the television reports showing the struggle for Kobane, there are the phone calls from home.

"I don't like it any more when the phone rings," he says. "Every day that passes it is more likely to be telling me someone we know or love has been murdered."

He says he was on the phone to his brother-in-law in Kurdistan a few days ago when there was a sudden burst of noise and gunfire. "He told me he had to go," says Amanj, "He said Isis were coming and he had to go and attack them.

"This isn't a war against an army. These Isis are murderers and torturers. They are a crime against humanity. And this fight is not about Kurdistan or Syria or Iraq, it is about the world."

Davan says he is proud of the march in Hull. And he hopes they can carry out more.

"We were very pleased," he says. "We had people from Kurdistan, from Syria, from Iraq. Even someone from Bangladesh and some from England.

"It is important because it shows those in Kurdistan that they are not being forgotten, that we support them and are trying to help.

"Isis do not even regard the Kurdish as Muslim. They believe we and our children should be slaughtered and our women be used for their pleasure. How can we do nothing?"

He points out that during the march, Facebook images were being sent back to Kurdistan and shared among family and communities thousands of miles away.

"It's an instant thing nowadays," he says. "They can see us protesting and I hope it gives them some strength."

But is there more they could do? Couldn't they return to Kurdistan to join the armed struggle against Isis?

Amanj says he would go tomorrow. "But I cannot. I am a British citizen. We are all British citizens," he says gesturing around the restaurant. We must abide by the laws of our country."

In the restaurant, working, taking breaks from their nearby shops or talking quietly together, are men of all ages. They come mainly from Kurdish towns in Iraq; Ebril; Sulaymaniyah; Dukan; Halabja, most of which have experienced Isis terror. Many have been in Hull for ten years or more.

Amanj says: "The advice from the Government is that we should not go. Because we are British citizens we should not be taking part or even travelling to the area.

"If I could, I would go and pick up an AK-47 and do what I needed to do."

Davan says he has four brothers fighting with the Peshmerga, the widely lauded Kurdish fighters currently fighting Isis across the borders of Iraq and Syria.

"We all know people who are fighting, brothers, sisters, family members," he says. "It is painful for us but what use would we be? We would need to be trained and armed. We would be a burden if we went to fight now."

Arming the Kurdish is one issue Amanj and Davan feel strongly about. They see the Peshmerga as the only force currently capable of trying to defeat Isis and believe the world should be giving them the arms and support to fight.

"We are 100 per cent behind the air strikes by the Americans and British," says Armanj.

"But Britain has sent just a few Tornados. There must be more. This is a threat to everyone, not just the Kurds."

They understand their protest, their demands for more British involvement in a distant war, may not resonate widely across Hull, where some racial tension continues to exist. But they are thankful of any support they get.

"We are very grateful to the people here in Hull who support us and show solidarity with us," says Amanj. He looks at his young son Dastan, three, and daughter Jiane, six, waiting patiently at a nearby table. "This is about something that maybe in the future will affect many, many more."

Davan is anxious about how the Kurdish community are seen in Hull. He is hurt by some comments posted on social media in the wake of the protest which suggested the men return to Kurdistan rather than descend on Queens Gardens.

"Hull is a good city and we are very proud to be from here and for our children to be born and grow up here," he says. "I was surprised by some comments.

"But then things are so much better than they were ten or so years ago. I look here on Spring Bank and ten years ago it was a ghost street. Now you have names above the shops, proud shopkeepers selling all sorts of food. Surely that is better? But I suppose Hull is just like anywhere in Britain. There will be isolated problems but that we have to accept.

"I just hope we can get the message across about what is happening. We had to do something. I hope people understand that."

During the interview, the restaurant's friendly owner Mohamed Rasul Abdullah serves endless small cups of sweet, strong tea.

He too has family in Kurdistan, in the city of Sulaymaniyah close to Iraq's border with Iran.

He worries when he phones his mum. "She is hungry and she is sad," he says. "There is little food and everyone is worried.

"I just want there to be less killing. What I want is for people to be peaceful. For all of them to sign a peace and live together."

Is that realistic, based on the current scorched earth tactics of Isis, its very public mass executions and beheadings, allied planes bombing across borders?

He wearily shrugs his shoulders. "Maybe, but I can hope."

Kurdish forces, known as the Peshmerga, are one of the few forces currently holding back the spread of Isis through the middle east.

The troops, a combination of regular soldiers and volunteers, including many women, belong to the self-proclaimed state of Kurdistan which spreads across northern Iraq, north-west Iran, northern Syria and southern Turkey.

The Kurds have fought to create an independent nation for centuries but have become increasingly aligned with the west since the ousting of Saddam Hussein and the war on terror.

After the rise of the extremist Islamic State, known as Isis, or Isil, the Kurds have found themselves increasingly at the forefront of the struggle to prevent them from taking over vast tracts of Syria, Iraq and Kurdistan.

Recent world attention has been on the Kurdish town of Kobane on the Syrian Turkish border where Isis have launched a major offensive.

Coalition aircraft have been attacking Isis positions in support of Kurdish defenders amid fears of a bloodbath if they seize the town.

The Kurds have been infuriated that powerful Turkish armed forces, standing just a few hundred yards away, have refused to come to their aid.

Turkey view many Kurds as terrorists because of their armed struggle for independence.

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