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Islamic State forces near Kurdish town in Syria

Turkish lawmakers prepare to send troops over border

The Columbian
Published: October 1, 2014, 5:00pm
2 Photos
Smoke rises after a mortar shell landed Wednesday south of the city center of the Syrian town of Kobani, near the Turkey-Syria border.
Smoke rises after a mortar shell landed Wednesday south of the city center of the Syrian town of Kobani, near the Turkey-Syria border. Thousands of new refugees from Kobani fled to Suruc, Turkey, on Wednesday. Photo Gallery

ANKARA, Turkey — Islamic State forces are closing in on the Syrian town of Kobani, a key Kurdish stronghold near the border with Turkey, as Turkish lawmakers prepare to authorize the army to send troops to the neighboring country.

Militants driving tanks and firing mortars captured the final village on the outskirts of Kobani and were one kilometer from the town’s entrance today, according to Ibrahim Ayhan, a lawmaker from the pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party. Airstrikes Wednesday failed to slow their advance, he said by phone. The U.S military said there were three strikes near Kobani, which destroyed an armed vehicle, artillery piece and tank.

The militants have besieged Kobani for more than two weeks, forcing an exodus of northern Syria’s ethnic Kurdish population into Turkey. The Turkish military has sent tanks and troops to the border in response, and is urging the creation of a buffer zone inside Syria.

Turkey is seeking parliamentary approval for possible military action in Syria and Iraq that would allow its own forces to target the Islamic State and permit foreign troops to use Turkish soil. A bill authorizing such measures is due for debate later today, though its passage won’t necessarily mean that Turkey will take action.

Islamic State fighters now control 325 villages and towns around Kobani, said the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which documents the Syrian war through a network of witnesses.

Kobani was rocked by explosions Wednesday, with black smoke billowing across the town’s white stone buildings, CNN-Turk television showed. As Ayhan spoke on the phone, another explosion ripped through the area.

Syrian Kurdish militias known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, are resisting with AK-47 automatic rifles and heavy machine guns against the “superior firepower” of Islamic State, said Ayhan. He said he saw YPG fighters fortifying their positions in the town with sandbags as they prepared for house-to-house combat.

Joining the coalition assembled by the United States to fight the Islamic State would mark a change of course for Turkey, which earlier showed reluctance to get involved in the conflict. Turkey “can’t stay out” of the campaign, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday.

Erdogan has called for a “secure zone” along the Syrian border to shelter refugees and against threats emanating from Syria. Kurds in Turkey have voiced suspicions that Erdogan wants to create a militarized buffer zone in order to smother the autonomous Kurdish region in Syria.

The Syrian conflict, which began in March 2011, has left more than 190,000 people dead as it escalated from peaceful protests into a war fought mostly across the country’s sectarian divisions.

Two blasts near a school in the central province of Homs on Wednesday left 39 people dead, including 30 children who were mostly under the age of 12, the Syrian Observatory said. The area where the attack took place is dominated by Alawites, the Shiite offshoot sect to which President Bashar Assad belongs.


With assistance from Bloomberg News’ Donna Abu-Nasr in Dubai.

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