Syrian Kurds get into a bus after crossing the border between Syria and Turkey in the southeastern town of Suruc yesterday.
US warplanes launched multiple strikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria yesterday, seeking to turn up the heat, as Britain carried out its first air raids against the group.
IS fighters closing in on a key town near the Turkish border were among the targets of nearly a dozen US air raids in Syria, the Pentagon said.
US warplanes also bombed IS in neighbouring Iraq as Kurdish forces launched attacks on three fronts in a bid to recapture ground lost to the group last month.
Britain said its jets had destroyed an IS heavy weapons post and a machinegun-mounted vehicle in the country’s first air strikes against the group in Iraq.
IS fighters have captured large parts of Iraq and Syria, declaring an Islamic “caliphate” and committing a wide range of atrocities.
But yesterday it freed more than 70 Kurdish schoolchildren it abducted in northern Syria in May, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor.
It was not immediately clear why IS released the children, part of a group of about 153 students snatched after taking school exams.
The move came as IS fighters penetrated within 2 to 3km of the Syrian town of Ain al-Arab on the Turkish border, the Observatory said.
It was the closest the militants had come to the town, known as Kobane in Kurdish, since they began an advance nearly two weeks ago, sending tens of thousands of mostly Kurdish refugees fleeing across the border.
Nato member Turkey, after months of caution in the fight against IS, has decided to harden its policy, and the government asked parliament yesterday to authorise military action against IS in Iraq and Syria.
Lawmakers are due to debate a motion tomorrow that Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said would “meet all the demands and eliminate the risks and threats”.
Ankara is being pressed to allow the transit of its territory by Western and Arab forces carrying out strikes and to allow US jets to conduct sorties from its Incirlik air base.
But it could also go further by sending Turkish military forces to join the attacks.
Turkey has remained tight-lipped about what its intervention will entail, but Arinc indicated the parliamentary mandate will be kept as broad as possible to allow the government freedom to decide.
In Iraq, Kurdish peshmerga forces battled to claw back land from militants, as US warplanes launched 11 strikes at several locations, destroying armed vehicles and IS positions.
They struck at the border town of Rabia, north of militant-controlled Mosul, and south of oil hub Kirkuk, commanders said.
They also attacked the town of Zumar, near the reservoir of Iraq’s largest dam, which has been a key battleground between Kurds and militants.
Peshmerga spokesman Halgord Hekmat said IS had been ousted from 30 positions.
Kurdish officials said at least six peshmerga and police were killed, as well as an unknown number of militants.
With the United States now conducting what it says are “near continuous” strikes in both Iraq and Syria, a Washington-based think tank warned that the costs of the campaign could swiftly escalate.
US aircraft have flown more than 4,000 sorties since August, including surveillance flights, refuelling runs and bombing raids, the military said on Monday.
The Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments estimated that when US air strikes got under way in Syria last week, Washington had already spent as much as $930mn on the campaign against IS.
If attacks continue at a moderate level, the cost will run at between $200mn and $320mn a month, but if they are conducted at a higher pace the monthly cost could rise to as much as $570mn.
The UN says about 191,000 people have been killed since an uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad erupted in 2011, escalating into a war that brought militants flocking to the country.
The Observatory said at least eight people were killed yesterday, among them four children, when regime helicopters dropped explosives-packed barrel bombs on northern Aleppo.
Members of the civil defence in the city’s rebel-held east rushed to the scene, using bulldozers and pickaxes to lift chunks of rubble and twisted metal out of the way.
The number of Syrians in urgent need of food aid has shot up to more than 6mn, or more than one in four of the population, UN agencies said yesterday.
Militant gains could spark new wave of refugees: UN
Tens of thousands more Syrians could be forced to flee their war-torn homeland if Islamic State fighters continue gaining ground, the UN aid chief warned yesterday as US-led air strikes pound the extremist group.
Valerie Amos told the UN Security Council that recent advances by Islamic State - also known as ISIL and ISIS - in northern Aleppo had forced more than 160,000 people, mostly women and children, to escape across the border into Turkey in just a few days.
“Their fear was so great that many people crossed heavily mined fields to seek refuge,” Amos told the 15-member council. “There is a possibility that tens of thousands more people could be forced out of Syria if ISIL forces continue to gain ground.”
Islamic State has seized large swathes of Syria and Iraq, declaring a caliphate. The group is accused of massacres, beheadings of civilians and soldiers, sexually enslaving women and girls and recruiting children, Amos said.
The United States began air and missile strikes on Islamic State strongholds in Syria last week, backed by some Gulf Arab allies, expanding an aerial campaign against the militants that began in Iraq last month.
In closed-door consultations after Amos’ briefing, Russian UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin questioned the impact of the air strikes on civilians. However, Amos said there was no evidence the attacks had curbed access to aid, diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Amos said the other parties to Syria’s 3-1/2 year civil war - sparked by President Bashar al-Assad’s crackdown on peaceful pro-democracy protesters - continue to show an “utter disregard” for international humanitarian and human rights law.
“The government has continued its aerial attacks, including the use of barrel bombs,” Amos said. “All parties continue to fire indiscriminately on populated areas, and on markets and bakeries.”
“Intense fighting and shifting conflict lines continues to make the delivery of aid difficult and dangerous,” she said.
About 11mn people in Syria - half the population - need help, with 6.4mn internally displaced; another 3mn are believed to have fled the country, Amos said. She added that the actual number of refugees is likely to be much higher.
More than 190,000 people have been killed during the conflict, the United Nations says.
“Those who cannot flee remain. ... Millions are short of food, of medicines, and almost 3mn children are not in school,” she said.
All parties to the conflict are blocking humanitarian aid, Amos said, including armed opposition groups and the government.
The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution in July authorising aid access at four border crossings from Turkey, Iraq and Jordan, even though Syria warned that it deems such deliveries incursions into its territory.
Amos said that under that resolution food and medicine had been delivered for about 150,000 people and other basic assistance for some 315,000, complementing the work of non-governmental organisations that have been operating for many years.
