Rick Moran: 130,000 Syrian Kurds Cross Border into Turkey in 2 Days

by Rick Moran


The ISIS onslaught in northern Syria has uprooted tens of thousands of Kurds who have been streaming into Turkey the last 3 days. The UN says more than 130,000 desperate refugees have poured across the Turkish border, with thousands more waiting to get in.
 
The situation got so bad that Turkey was forced to close all but two of its 9 border crossing, so big was the crush of humanity. 

Meanwhile, the Kurdish militia fighting ISIS says it has halted the terrorist's advance on the strategic border town of Ayn al-Arab.

Reuters:

"Fierce clashes are still under way but the ISIS (Islamic State) advance to the east of Kobani has been halted since last night," Redur Xelil, spokesman for the main Kurdish armed group, the YPG, said via Skype.
He said the eastern front was the scene of the fiercest fighting in the offensive launched by Islamic State last Tuesday on Kobani, also known in Arabic as Ayn al-Arab. More than 100,000 Syrian Kurds, driven by fear of Islamic State, have fled its advance, many crossing the border into Turkey.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks violence in the Syrian war, said Islamic State fighters had made no significant advance in the last 24 hours.
The offensive is Islamic State's second attempt to take Kobani since June, when it staged a lightning advance across northern Iraq, seizing the city of Mosul and with it Iraqi weaponry including American-made hardware that the Syrian Kurds say is now being used against them.
The previous attack on Kobani, in July, was fought off with the help of Kurds who crossed the border from Turkey. Xelil said hundreds had crossed from Turkey again to help repel the current offensive.
"There have been no reinforcements apart from some Kurdish youths from Turkey," he said.
The United States has launched air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and has said it will not hesitate to strike the group in Syria, but wants allies to join its campaign.
The United Nations said on Sunday the number of Syrian Kurds who had fled into neighboring Turkey alone might have topped 100,000 and was likely to go much higher.
"There are still clashes to the west and south of Kobani but not at the same intensity as the eastern front," Xelil said.
Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Observatory, said Islamic State had made "no progress worth mentioning" in the past 24 hours, but that clashes were "at their most intense".
There were conflicting accounts of how far Islamic State fighters were from Kobani. Xelil said they were 20-30 km (12-19 miles) away, while Abdulrahman said they were around half that distance from the town.

The YPG is a Kurdish militia and allied with the PPK, the Kurdish resistance group in Turkey that the US has designated as terrorists. They have received no US arms and aren't likely to.

The YPG does not have the heavy arms to stop ISIS in a determined attack. How long they can hold out remains to be seen. The town of Ayn al-Arab has about 45,000 residents, most of whom would be expected to flee in the advent of an ISIS victory.

That will only make Turkey's refugee problem more acute. With 1.6 million refugees crowding into squalid camps near the border, conditions are only going to get worse.


Rick Moran

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/09/130000_syrian_kurds_cross_border_into_turkey_in_2_days.html

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