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Tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds flooded into Turkey yesterday, fleeing an onslaught by the Islamic State group that prompted an appeal for international intervention. |
Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said more than 60,000 Syrian Kurds had crossed into the country since the frontier was opened up on Friday.
The exodus was prompted by intense clashes between the Islamic State (IS) group and Kurdish fighters trying to hold off an assault on the town of Ain al-Arab, known as Kobane by the Kurds.
It is the third largest Kurdish town in Syria and a strategic prize because it lies on the border with Turkey in northern Aleppo province.
Since Tuesday night, IS fighters have been advancing around the town, hoping to seize it and secure their control over a large swathe of Syria’s northern border with Turkey.
The group has moved quickly, seizing at least 60 villages around the town, although the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said 18 IS fighters were killed in clashes overnight.
Yesterday, the Observatory said 300 Kurdish fighters had entered Syria from Turkey to reinforce the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) fighting IS.
People of all ages were among those seeking shelter in Turkey, including a child clutching a sibling’s hand as they marched across the dusty border and an elderly woman in a wheelchair helped by relatives.
“The IS came to our village and threatened everyone. They bombed our village and destroyed all the houses. They beheaded those who chose to stay,” said Mohamed Isa, 43, who left with his family of seven.
Turkish forces cut the barbed wire along the frontier to make it easier for people to enter while soldiers and aid workers handed out food and water to the refugees.
IS’s advances have prompted calls from Syria’s opposition and Kurdish officials for international intervention, with one leader warning of “ethnic cleansing”.
The United States has organised a coalition of countries to tackle IS militants who have declared an Islamic “caliphate” in parts of Syria and Iraq and carried out abuses including beheadings and crucifixions.
US President Barack Obama plans to make his case against IS before the world at the UN General Assembly next week in a bid for more international support.
The Syrian opposition National Coalition urged international air strikes to “stop mass atrocities” if IS advances into Ain al-Arab.
“Air strikes are needed to help opposition forces protect vulnerable civilians,” the coalition’s US representative Najib Ghadbian said.
And Salih Muslim Mohamed, a leader of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), urged the United States and Europe to help Ain al-Arab/Kobane avoid the fate of the Iraqi town of Sinjar, which has been emptied of its Yazidi minority residents in the wake of an IS onslaught.
“Kobane is facing the most barbaric attack in its history,” he warned.
“If you want to avoid an ethnic cleansing even more barbaric than that in Sinjar, you must support Kobane because the next few hours will be decisive,” he added in a statement late Friday.
The Observatory reported yesterday that IS militants had executed at least 11 Kurds, and that the fate of some 800 residents who fled their villages remained “unknown”.
In Lebanon, a captive soldier was executed by the Al Nusra Front, the Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda, the government said.
