MURSITPINAR, Turkey: Turkey said yesterday that some 130,000 people had flooded across its border from Syria fleeing an advance by Islamic State group on a strategic Kurdish border town.
The massive influx comes as jihadists advance towards Ain Al Arab, known as Kobane to the Kurds, Syria’s third-largest Kurdish town. They have seized dozens of villages in their advance and there have been reports of executions in areas now under their control.
Syrian opposition officials and Kurdish activists have called for international intervention by the US-led coalition assembled to fight IS, but there has been no sign yet of Washington expanding its air campaign in Iraq to Syria.
The IS group has seized large parts of Syria and Iraq, declared an Islamic “caliphate” in areas under its control and committed widespread atrocities including beheadings and crucifixions.
They have murdered two US journalists and a British aid worker in on-camera beheadings, and on Monday an IS spokesman called for the killing of Western citizens whose countries have joined a US-led coalition against the jihadists.
Syria’s opposition yesterdaycalled for air strikes to be immediately launched against Islamist fighters who have captured villages in the north — or risk “catastrophe.”AFP
