Middle East Thousands of Syrian Kurds flee ISIL advance About 45,000 cross into Turkey after Sunni fighters take dozens of villages along border, escalating fears of massacre

Middle East

Thousands of Syrian Kurds flee ISIL advance

About 45,000 cross into Turkey after Sunni fighters take dozens of villages along border, escalating fears of massacre

housands of Syrian Kurds flee ISIL advance

About 45,000 cross into Turkey after Sunni fighters take dozens of villages along border, escalating fears of massacre. Last updated: 20 Sep 2014 14:54

Syrian Kurdish refugees have gathered along the border with Turkey since Thursday [AFP]

Tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds have crossed into Turkey over the past day, fleeing an advance by fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), who have seized dozens of villages close to the border, Turkish officials say. Turkey opened a stretch of the frontier on Friday after Kurdish civilians fled their homes, fearing an imminent attack on the border town of Ayn al-Arab, known as Kobani in Kurdish. "Around 45,000 Syrian Kurds have crossed the border as of now from eight entrance points along a 30km distance from Akcakale to Mursitpinar since we opened the border yesterday," Numan Kurtulmus, Turkish deputy prime minister, said. The refugees, who fled fighting between ISIL and Kurdish fighters, had been amassing along the border since Thursday. ISIL's advances in northern Syria have prompted calls for help by the region's Kurds who fear an impending massacre in the town of Kobani, which sits in a strategic position close to the Turkish border. At least 18 ISIL fighters were killed in clashes with Syrian Kurds overnight as the Sunni armed group took control of more villages around the town, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war. Masoud Barzani, Iraqi Kurdish leader, called on Friday for international intervention to protect Kobani from the ISIL advance, saying the fighters must be "hit and destroyed wherever they are". The US is drawing up plans for military action in Syria against ISIL, which has seized larges expanses of territory in Syria and Iraq, proclaiming a caliphate in the heart of the Middle East. Addressing a session of the UN Security Council on Iraq on Friday, US Secretary of State John Kerry said that Iran could play a key role in confronting and eliminating ISIL in Iraq. Kerry said there was a role for nearly every country in the world to defeat what he described as a "militant cult masquerading as a religious movement". His comments came as Tehran and six top world powers launched a fresh effort at narrowing differences on what nuclear concessions Iran must agree to in exchange for full sanctions relief. US officials told the Reuters news agency the basic dilemma was how to keep Iran from hardening its stance in the nuclear talks out of a belief, which officials say would be misguided, that Washington might make nuclear concessions in exchange for help against ISIL.

  copy http://www.aljazeera.com/new