Turkey opens border to Syrian Kurds fleeing 'Islamic State'
Written by : Mohamed Abdel Fattah
Sep19, 2014
Thousands of Kurds fleeing the "Islamic State" have crossed into Turkey. The militant group has seized Kurdish villages in northern Syria over the past two days.
TV footage showed exhausted people, mostly women and children, crossing checkpoint near the Turkish town of Suruc as mortar fire struck a village on the Syrian side.
Turkey has allowed thousands of Syrian Kurds fleeing Islamic State to cross borders - which shares a border with Iraq and Syria - has taken in more than 847,000 Syrian refugees since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in 2011.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks developments in the war, said on Friday IS had seized three more villages near Kobani, bringing to 24 the number it had taken.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that he had given the order after receiving information that 4,000 Kurds had arrived at the border seeking shelter.
"We have taken in 4,000 brothers. The number might increase. Their needs will be met. This is a humanitarian mission."Davutoglu said .
Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani called on Friday for international intervention to protect a Kurdish town in neighboring Syria from Islamic State fighters
The Syrian Kurds are the latest group to be targeted by Islamic State as it expands its territory in Syria and Iraq. Its fighters have already expelled thousands of members of the Christian and Yezidi minorities in Iraq from their villages.
For more than a year, the Islamic State group and Kurdish militias have been locked in a fierce fight in several pockets of northern Syria where large Kurdish populations reside.
The clashes are but one aspect of Syria's broader civil war a multilayered conflict that the U.N. says has killed more than 190,000.
The Kurds were appealing for military aid from other Kurdish groups in the region including the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), he said. Support from Kurds who crossed from Turkey helped to repel an Islamic State attack on Kobani in July.
Turkish PKK rebels later issued a call for the youth in Turkey's southeast to join the fight in northern Syria.
The Syrian government, meanwhile has begun targeting the group with greater frequency since the militants overran much of northern and western Iraq ,the government on Thursday helicopter gunships attacked the northern town of al-Bab, which is controlled by ISIL, killing at least a dozen people.
President Bashar al-Assad's regime had largely left the group alone, instead focusing his firepower on more moderate rebel brigades.
President Barack Obama pledged last week to establish a coalition to defeat ISIS fighters in both Iraq and Syria, plunging the United States into two separate civil wars in which nearly every country in the Middle East has a stake.
ISIS fighters set off alarms across the Middle East since June when they swept across northern Iraq, seizing cities, slaughtering prisoners, proclaiming a caliphate to rule over all Muslims and ordering non-Sunnis to convert or die.
The United States resumed air strikes in Iraq in August for the first time since the 2011 withdrawal of the last U.S. troops, fearful the militants would break the country up and use it as a base for attacks on the West.
Sources
http://www.dw.de/turkey-lets-in-syria-kurds-fleeing-islamic-state/a-17935335
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/19/us-syria-crisis-turkey-idUSKBN0HE0RR20140919
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29277840
Sep19, 2014
Thousands of Kurds fleeing the "Islamic State" have crossed into Turkey. The militant group has seized Kurdish villages in northern Syria over the past two days.
TV footage showed exhausted people, mostly women and children, crossing checkpoint near the Turkish town of Suruc as mortar fire struck a village on the Syrian side.
Turkey has allowed thousands of Syrian Kurds fleeing Islamic State to cross borders - which shares a border with Iraq and Syria - has taken in more than 847,000 Syrian refugees since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in 2011.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks developments in the war, said on Friday IS had seized three more villages near Kobani, bringing to 24 the number it had taken.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that he had given the order after receiving information that 4,000 Kurds had arrived at the border seeking shelter.
"We have taken in 4,000 brothers. The number might increase. Their needs will be met. This is a humanitarian mission."Davutoglu said .
Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani called on Friday for international intervention to protect a Kurdish town in neighboring Syria from Islamic State fighters
The Syrian Kurds are the latest group to be targeted by Islamic State as it expands its territory in Syria and Iraq. Its fighters have already expelled thousands of members of the Christian and Yezidi minorities in Iraq from their villages.
For more than a year, the Islamic State group and Kurdish militias have been locked in a fierce fight in several pockets of northern Syria where large Kurdish populations reside.
The clashes are but one aspect of Syria's broader civil war a multilayered conflict that the U.N. says has killed more than 190,000.
The Kurds were appealing for military aid from other Kurdish groups in the region including the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), he said. Support from Kurds who crossed from Turkey helped to repel an Islamic State attack on Kobani in July.
Turkish PKK rebels later issued a call for the youth in Turkey's southeast to join the fight in northern Syria.
The Syrian government, meanwhile has begun targeting the group with greater frequency since the militants overran much of northern and western Iraq ,the government on Thursday helicopter gunships attacked the northern town of al-Bab, which is controlled by ISIL, killing at least a dozen people.
President Bashar al-Assad's regime had largely left the group alone, instead focusing his firepower on more moderate rebel brigades.
President Barack Obama pledged last week to establish a coalition to defeat ISIS fighters in both Iraq and Syria, plunging the United States into two separate civil wars in which nearly every country in the Middle East has a stake.
ISIS fighters set off alarms across the Middle East since June when they swept across northern Iraq, seizing cities, slaughtering prisoners, proclaiming a caliphate to rule over all Muslims and ordering non-Sunnis to convert or die.
The United States resumed air strikes in Iraq in August for the first time since the 2011 withdrawal of the last U.S. troops, fearful the militants would break the country up and use it as a base for attacks on the West.
Sources
http://www.dw.de/turkey-lets-in-syria-kurds-fleeing-islamic-state/a-17935335
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/19/us-syria-crisis-turkey-idUSKBN0HE0RR20140919
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29277840
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