Islamic State (IS) fighters have closed to within a few kilometers of a key Kurdish town on Syria’s border with Turkey, as Ankara mulls joining the coalition against the extremists.
NATO member Turkey on Monday deployed tanks to reinforce its side of the border and said the Turkish parliament would this week debate joining the international coalition against the jihadists operating on the nation’s doorstep.
The coalition carried out new raids against Islamic State positions, but the jihadists still managed to advance within 5km of the strategic Syrian town of Ain al-Arab, known as Kobane to the Kurds, a monitor said.
Photo: AFP
It was the closest the militants had come to the town since they began advancing toward it nearly two weeks ago, sending tens of thousands of mostly Kurdish refugees across the border, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
As they advanced, the jihadists fired at least 15 rockets at the town center, killing at least one person. Other rockets hit the border zone.
Across the frontier, Turkey’s army was seen deploying tanks and armored vehicles to the town of Mursitpinar, after stray bullets hit Turkish villages and at least three mortar shells crashed nearby.
In Ankara, Turkish Parliamentary Speaker Cemil Cicek was reported to have said that motions for discussions on Turkey joining the coalition could land with lawmakers as early as yesterday.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said they would be debated tomorrow.
Turkey had refused to join the coalition while dozens of its citizens — including diplomats and children — were being held by the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — after being abducted in Iraq.
After they were freed, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey’s position had changed, signaling a more robust stance toward the group.
“We will hold discussions with our relevant institutions this week. We will definitely be where we need to be,” Erdogan said on Sunday. “We cannot stay out of this.”
The coalition has been carrying out strikes against jihadists inside Syria for nearly a week, with US and Arab aircraft taking part in the raids.
The US Central Command, which oversees US forces in the Middle East, said Washington and its allies struck eight targets in Syria and three in Iraq on Sunday night and on Monday.
In the eastern Syrian province of Deir Ezzor, strikes destroyed an Islamic State armed vehicle and an anti-aircraft artillery transporter, it said.
In Raqa, the de facto headquarters of the Islamic State, two strikes hit jihadist compounds near the provincial capital, while near Minbej two other raids struck an Islamic State training camp and vehicles in a staging area adjacent to a grain storage facility used by the jihadists as a logistics hub.
The statement said initial indications were that the attacks were successful.
The observatory, which reported the same strikes, said civilians were believed to have been killed in the raid on the grain storage facility.
The US began its aerial campaign in Syria on Tuesday last week, expanding strikes that began in August against Islamic State positions in Iraq.
US aircraft have flown about 4,100 sorties in the air war against the jihadists in Iraq and Syria since August, including surveillance flights, refueling runs and bombing raids, a military officer said.
In addition, Arab coalition partners have undertaken about 40 flights in the operation in Syria, the officer told reporters.
So far, the strikes have killed at least 211 Islamic State jihadists and 22 civilians in Syria, the observatory said.
The coalition has attracted dozens of countries, though only a handful of Arab allies — Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Jordan — are participating in the strikes on Syrian soil.
On Monday at the UN General Assembly, Syrian Minister of Foreign Affairs Walid Muallem hit out at countries that had supported Muslim extremists, in an implicit attack on Gulf nations.
Combating the Islamic State threat “is certainly possible through military strikes, but most importantly to do so through stopping states that arm, support, train, fund and smuggle those terrorist groups,” Muallem said.
In an interview with CBS News, US President Barack Obama acknowledged his administration had underestimated the opportunity that the three-and-a-half-year-old Syrian civil war would provide for jihadist militants to regroup and stage a sudden comeback.
“I think our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria,” Obama said.
He also admitted Washington had placed too much faith in Iraqi security forces trained and supplied by the US, which collapsed in the face of a lightning offensive led by the Islamic State in June.
Cultural experts gathered at UNESCO’s Paris headquarters warned that Islamic State jihadists were also destroying age-old heritage sites and looting others to sell valued artifacts on the black market.
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