More than 66,000 Kurdish refugees have fled from Syria into Turkey in the last 24 hours said Turkish officials, as militants from the Islamic State (IS) advanced on the Kurdish enclave of Kobani in Syria.
Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus told reporters on Saturday "as of today, the number of Syrian Kurds who entered Turkey has exceeded 60,000" after Turkey opened the border for refugees on Friday.
As refugees fled the besieged region, some 600 fighters from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), based in South-East Turkey crossed into Syria to fight against IS, reported AP. A military official from Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region told AP, "the PKK entered early this morning and they headed to Kobani."
The latest reports come after the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a group linked to the PKK, called on Kurds from Turkey to join the battle against IS, warning that a genocide could occur in Kobani if the IS advance, which has seen 21 Kurdish villages in North-West Syria captures in less than 24 hours, was not stopped.
See our earlier post: Kurds warn of genocide by IS in North-West Syria (19 September 2014)
The president of Iraq's Kurdish region, Masoud Barzani, also warned that the latest IS attacks on Kurds in Syria "threaten the whole entirety of the Kurdish nation and it has targeted the honor, dignity and existence of our people."
Mohammed Saleh Muslim, head of Syria's Kurdish Democratic Union, added,
"Kobani is facing the fiercest and most barbaric attack in its history… Kobani calls on all those who defend humane and democratic values... to stand by Kobani and support it immediately. The coming hours are decisive."
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