SURUC, Turkey/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Turkey’s parliament authorised the government yesterday to order military action against Islamic State as the insurgents tightened their grip on a Syrian border town, sending thousands more Kurdish refugees into Turkey.
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 any such action was imminent.
The mandate also allows foreign troops to launch operations from Turkey, a NATO member that 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.
Islamic State fighters advanced to within a few km (miles) 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 told Reuters.
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 farther south overnight.
The US Central Command reported that US and other forces in the coalition 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’t want 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.
