Kurds clash with police at Syrian border

Tensions rise as thousands try to cross over to Turkey

Turkish soldiers stand guard as several hundred Syrian refugees wait, at the border in Suruc, Turkey, Sunday, Sept. 21, 2014. Turkey opened its border Saturday to allow in up to 60,000 people who massed on the Turkey-Syria border, fleeing the Islamic militants’ advance on Kobani. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)
Turkish soldiers stand guard as several hundred Syrian refugees wait, at the border in Suruc, Turkey, Sunday, Sept. 21, 2014. Turkey opened its border Saturday to allow in up to 60,000 people who massed on the Turkey-Syria border, fleeing the Islamic militants’ advance on Kobani. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)

IRBIL, Iraq -- Kurdish refugees fleeing advances by the Islamic State group encircling the Syrian border town of Kobani fought with Turkish police Sunday as the siege that began last week became increasingly dire.


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Kobani is surrounded on three sides by the Islamic State, which controls large parts of Syria and Iraq, and to the north faces a Turkish government generally hostile to the Kurds.

The number of refugees seeking shelter in Turkey from the Islamic State group's advance has reached 100,000 in less than a week, an official said Sunday.

The head of Turkey's disaster management agency, Fuat Oktay, said the figure relates to Syrians escaping the area near Kobani, where fighting has raged between the Islamic State and Kurdish fighters since Thursday.

The United Nations refugee agency said earlier that about 70,000 Syrians have crossed into Turkey in the past 24 hours, and that it was preparing for the arrival of hundreds of thousands more. Those are significant numbers, even in the context of the 1.5 million refugees who've fled to Turkey in the past 3½ years.

Turkish authorities said they were ready to deal with the influx.

"We have been prepared for this," disaster management agency spokesman Dogan Eskinat said. "We are also prepared for worse."

The refugees, most of them ethnic Kurds, have been desperate to reach Turkey and escape the advance of religious extremists barreling across Syria.

As refugees flooded in, Turkey closed the border crossing in Kucuk Kendirciler to Turkish Kurds. Local police said they were seeking to prevent Kurdish fighters from entering Syria. Hundreds of Kurdish fighters entered Syria from Turkey on Saturday, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Kucuk Kendirciler is a small village about a mile from Kobani.

Clashes broke out as Kurds trying to approach the crossing from inside Turkey scuffled with security forces, which attacked crowds with tear gas, paint pellets and water cannons. The state-run Anadolu Agency reported that Kurdish protesters had hurled stones at the security forces.

The pro-Kurdish Democratic Regions' Party said two people were seriously injured in the clashes, including one Kurdish legislator who was hospitalized. The party said the Kurds were protesting the Islamic State group's attacks as well as the border closure.

The sound of gunfire could be heard from the Syrian side of the frontier where refugees were piling up after authorities shut the crossing. It wasn't immediately clear whether they were unable to cross or simply waiting to see what would happen.

Also on Sunday, heavy clashes broke out between the Islamic State group and Kurdish fighters only a few miles from Kobani, which is also known as Ayn Arab.

The Islamic State group was bombarding villagers with tanks, artillery and multiple rocket launchers, said Nasser Haj Mansour, an official at the defense office in Syria's Kurdish region.

"They are even targeting civilians who are fleeing," Haj Mansour said by telephone.

Inside Kobani, a member of the YPK, the local ruling party, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the town had begun to empty into Turkey after the authorities finally allowed the border to open, but that attempts to control the flow were causing major tension.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Islamic State group has taken control of 64 villages in northern Syria since the fighting began there early Wednesday. It said that the fate of some 800 Kurds from these villages is unknown, adding that the Islamic State group executed 11 civilians, including two boys.

Elsewhere, at least 15 people in government-held areas across Syria were killed by rebel-fired mortar shells, state-run media said. Rebels often indiscriminately fire mortars into civilian areas controlled by the government, but such a high death toll is unusual, suggesting rebels have inched closer to government-controlled cities or improved their weaponry, much of which is made in local workshops.

State-run media said six people were killed in the southern Syrian province of Daraa, another three in Damascus and six in the northern city of Aleppo.

Another 17 people were killed in government airstrikes on the northeastern rebel-held town of Saraqeb, reported the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Observatory said the number was likely to rise, as many civilians were still buried under the rubble of their destroyed homes.

Syria cautions U.S.

Meanwhile, Syria's parliament speaker said Sunday that the U.S. should work with Damascus to battle the Islamic State group rather than allying with nations that he accused of supporting terrorism.

Speaker Jihad Laham was apparently referring to Saudi Arabia and other countries backing rebels trying to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad.

President Barack Obama is currently working to form a global coalition to confront the Islamic State group. The U.S., meanwhile, has been conducting airstrikes against Islamic State fighters in Iraq since August. Obama last week authorized strikes against the group in Syria.

In an opinion column published Sunday in the Tampa Bay Times, Obama wrote, "This is not and will not be America's fight alone. That's why we continue to build a broad international coalition." He said Arab countries have offered to help, but he mentioned none by name and did not describe their specific roles.

U.S. officials have ruled out direct coordination with Assad's government, a move that has infuriated Syrian officials, who say any airstrikes without their consent would be a breach of the country's sovereignty.

They also appear to be concerned that an anti-Islamic State group coalition might ultimately shift targets to assist rebels in overthrowing Assad.

During a parliament session, Laham, the speaker, said those "who really want to combat terrorism must cooperate with Syria in accordance with long-term plans and not by supporting terrorist organizations under false titles."

While the U.S. has led a military campaign plan to retake Iraqi territory held by the Islamic State, the top American military officer on Sunday called for attacking the extremists in several locations simultaneously, and its success depends on getting more Arab help.

"We want them to wake up every day realizing that they are being squeezed from multiple directions," Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters, referring to the Islamic State group, which also is known by the acronyms ISIL and ISIS.

"If we can get ISIL looking in about five different directions, that's the desired end state," he added in an interview with reporters traveling with him to Croatia from Lithuania, where he discussed Iraq and other issues with his NATO counterparts.

Dempsey stressed the importance of gaining more Arab participation in the U.S.-led effort, suggesting that without it the military campaign might not move to its next phase. He called wider Arab participation a prerequisite for Obama's approval of the military campaign plan. Obama was briefed on the plan last week but has not approved it yet.

Dempsey said he has no estimate of how many coalition forces he would like to see join with the U.S. in fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq, but he ticked off a list of military capabilities that he hopes can be provided by Arab nations and others. These include intelligence sharing, aerial refueling aircraft, surveillance and reconnaissance planes, precision strike aircraft, and financial assistance for the training and equipping of Iraqi troops as well as the Syrian moderate opposition.

Attacks kill 10

In Iraq's fight against the Islamic State, bomb and mortar fire attacks killed 10 people in Shiite areas in and around Baghdad on Sunday, as Iraqi security forces said they succeeded in breaking a siege on soldiers who had been surrounded by Islamic State militants west of Baghdad.

Police officials said three mortar shells landed on a residential area in Sabaa al-Bour, a town just north of Baghdad, killing six, including a 12-year-old boy. Several cars were damaged in the attack, which wounded 17. Later, a bomb blast in a commercial street killed four people and wounded 11 in the capital's northeastern district of Shaab.

Medical officials confirmed the casualty tolls. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

Army spokesman Lt. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi said Sunday that Iraqi security forces overnight were able to break the siege on about 400 soldiers who were surrounded by Islamic State militants three days ago in an area in Sunni-dominated Anbar province. He did not elaborate.

The soldiers had been trapped in the Sijir area near the city of Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad.

Islamic militants later launched attacks involving suicide bombers on the Iraqi troops in Sijir, and clashes broke out, causing unspecified casualties, said security officials who were not authorized to speak to the media.

Sunni fighters took control of Fallujah earlier this year, and government forces have been unable to take it back.

Elsewhere, with impact of the Islamic State's advance spreading across the globe, the wife of a British aid worker held hostage by the Islamic State group has issued a statement pleading for the militants to release him and respond to her messages "before it is too late."

The Islamic State, which has released online videos showing the beheading of two American journalists and another British aid worker, has threatened to kill former taxi driver Alan Henning next.

Henning, 47, was kidnapped in December in Syria, shortly after crossing into the country from Turkey in an aid convoy.

His wife, Barbara, in a statement released by Britain's Foreign Office late Saturday, implored the militants to "see it in their hearts" to release him.

And in France, authorities have filed preliminary charges against five people, including a sister and brother, suspected of belonging to a ring specialized in recruiting young female fighters for the Islamic State group.

A judicial official said Sunday that the five were arrested Tuesday and Wednesday in Vaux-en-Velin in central France and were being held in custody.

The arrests came weeks after a series of detentions of adolescent girls around France, including a 16-year-old caught at the airport in Nice as she prepared to leave for Turkey and ultimately Syria, and three teens who were planning to travel abroad together and corresponded on social networks.

Information for this article was contributed by Mitch Prothero of the McClatchy Washington Bureau and by Albert Aji, Diaa Hadid, Desmond Butler, Suzan Fraser, Bassem Mroue, Frank Jordans, Sameer N. Yacoub, Maamoun Youssef and Robert Burns of The Associated Press.

A Section on 09/22/2014

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