Ankara/TEHRAN: Iran warned neighbouring Turkey yesterday against doing anything that might aggravate tensions in the region, after the parliament in Ankara voted to authorise military intervention in Syria and Iraq.
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif spoke by telephone with his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu, and “criticised the method chosen to fight terrorism, expressing concern about any action that might aggravate the situation,” state news agency Irna reported.
“In the current situation, the countries of the region must act with responsibility and avoid aggravating” matters, he added.
Iran supports President Bashar Al Assad in Syria’s more than three-year-old civil war, while Turkey backs rebels seeking to overthrow him.
Earlier yesterday, Turkish MPs voted to allow the use of armed forces against Islamic State (IS) group in Syria and Iraq, both of which border Turkey. However, the one-year mandate is very broad in scope and in no way commits Turkey to sending troops into Syria and Iraq.
The government has said it will decide on concrete steps after winning authorisation, with many analysts expecting a cautious approach.
The vote gives the government powers to order incursions into Syria and Iraq to counter the threat of attack “from all terrorist groups”, although there was little sign that any such action was imminent.
The mandate also allows foreign troops to launch operations from Turkey, a Nato member which hosts a US air base in its southern town of Incirlik, but which has so far resisted a frontline role in the military campaign against the insurgents.
“The rising influence of radical groups in Syria threatens Turkey’s national security... The aim of this mandate is to minimise as much as possible the impact of the clashes on our borders,” Defence Minister Ismet Yilmaz told parliament.
Meanwhile, Islamic State fighters advanced to within a few kilometres of the mainly Kurdish border town of Kobani on three sides yesterday, extending their gains after taking control of hundreds of villages around the town in recent weeks.
Smoke rose behind hills to the south of Kobani as the insurgents continued their shelling into the night. Dozens of anti-tank missiles with bright-red tracers flashed through the sky as darkness enveloped the town. Kobani’s electricity supply was cut after militants bombarded a local power grid, a Kurdish fighter said.
In neighbouring Iraq, which also borders Turkey, the insurgents have carried out mass executions, abducted women and girls as sex slaves, and used children as fighters in what may amount to war crimes, the United Nations said.
They took control of most of the western Iraqi town of Hit early on Thursday in Anbar province, where they already control many surrounding towns, launching the assault with three suicide car bombs at its eastern entrance.
US-led forces, which have been bombing Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq, hit a village near Kobani on Wednesday. Sources in the town, which is known as Ayn Al Arab in Arabic, reported strikes further south overnight.
The US Central Command reported that US and other forces in the coalition had conducted four strikes on Wednesday and yesterday in Syria and seven in Iraq. Targets included buildings, tanks and other armed vehicles.
But such strikes seemed to have done little to stop the Islamists’ advance. “We left because we realised it was only going to get worse,” said Leyla, a 37-year-old Syrian arriving at the Yumurtalik border crossing with her six children after waiting 10 days in a field, hoping the clashes would subside. “We will go back tomorrow if Islamic State leaves. I don’twant to be here,” she said.
Kurdish militants in Turkey warned that peace talks with Ankara, meant to end a three-decade insurgency, would collapse if the Islamist insurgents were allowed to carry out a massacre.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors Syria’s war, said Islamic State militants were clashing with Kurdish fighters hundreds of metres from Kobani, raising fears they would enter the town “at any moment”.
It said it had confirmed the deaths of 16 Islamic State fighters and seven Kurdish militants but that the true toll was likely to be higher. About 20 explosions were heard in the areas of the Tishrin dam and town of Manbij 50km south of Kobani overnight, resulting from missile strikes believed to be carried out by the coalition, the Observatory said earlier.
Asya Abdullah, a senior official in Syria’s dominant Kurdish political party the Democratic Union Party (PYD), said there were clashes to the east, west and south of Kobani and that Islamic State had advanced to within 2-3 km on all fronts. “If they want to prevent a massacre (the coalition) must act much more comprehensively,” she said by phone from Kobani, adding that air strikes elsewhere in Syria had pushed Islamic State fighters towards the border town.
AFP/reuters
