Armenia accelerates its arms purchases from Russia

April 18, 2016 By administrator

arton124898-480x270 Two weeks after the sudden escalation of the Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian government accelerated Friday the purchase of new weapons made in Russia, with the Russian loan of $ 200 million granted last year.

Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan instructed the Defense Ministry to “determine” the list of weapons and negotiate corresponding supply contracts with Russian government agencies. He said that contracts should specify “the volumes, prices and delivery dates.”

The government has also asked the Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) to rapidly accelerate banking needed to use the loan to $ 200 million allocated by the Russian government in June.

After meeting with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev Russian in Yerevan on April 7 Abrahamian complained of a “slowdown” in the implementation of the loan agreement with Rosoboronexport, a state arms exporter Russia. He asked Medvedev to ask of Rosoboronexport “concluded contracts” with Armenia.

The demand came two days after a cease-fire with Russian mediation, interrupted the worst fighting between Armenian forces and Azerbaijani forces in Karabakh since 1994. Many in Armenia believe that the offense Azerbaijan from April 2 to Karabakh was made possible because of the Russian offensive weapons purchased by Baku.

There are nearly two months, the Russian government revealed the list of military equipment that Yerevan would be allowed to buy with credit of $ 200 million. The most deadly of these weapons is the multi-shot system Smerch launch, which has a firing range of up to 90 kilometers.

The list also includes the TOS-1A (heavy flamethrower systems).

Russia has sold 18 Smerch launchers and flamethrowers as TOS-1A to Azerbaijan. The Armenian military says the Azerbaijani army has used both systems during the hostilities of April 2 to 5 on the contact line of Karabakh.

Armenia would also be able to buy weapons from Russian anti-tank fabrication, surface to air missiles fired from the shoulder, demining equipment, armored vehicles and heavy military trucks.

Monday, April 18, 2016,
Claire © armenews.com

Armenia President: A pity that Russia and other CSTO countries sell weapons to Azerbaijan

April 6, 2016 By administrator

default68 Russia is our strategic ally, we are CSTO (Collective Security TreatyOrganization) member countries, and it is truly regrettable for us that not only Russia, but also other members of the same organization sell weapons to Azerbaijan.

The President of Armenia, Serzh Sargsyan, on Wednesday stated the aforesaid at his joint news conference, in Berlin, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

He added that Armenia has a limited capacity to have any bearing on this process.

“Azerbaijan has modern weapons, and the [recent] three-day military actions [in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone] showed that it uses them,” Sargsyan stressed. “But strength is not in the modernity of the weapons and in the [number of] tanks, but in the faith which the Karabakh—and in general, the Armenian—people have; the faith that the homeland must be defended.

“You see how our [Armenian] society manifested itself [during these hostilities]. In Azerbaijan, you will not find [any] information about casualties. The three-day tension showed that the best societies also know to fight well.”

Sarkisian Reports New Arms Supplies to Armenia

March 22, 2016 By administrator

sarkisianaddress YEREVAN(RFE/RL) — Armenia’s armed forces acquired “qualitatively new weapons” late last year, President Serzh Sarkisian said on Monday as he met with the top military brass in Yerevan.

Sarkisian addressed the commanders of Armenian army units and other senior officers at the start of their annual “operational gatherings” that will end in command and staff exercises. Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian said the war games “will take into account the current military-political situation in the region.”

“At the end of last year, the Armenian Armed Forces received qualitatively new weapons and guarantees of further [arms] supplies,” Sarkisian said in a speech partly publicized by his office. “Even more important is the fact that you have drawn up a new concept for what you call ‘armed confrontation deterrence.’”

A statement by the presidential press service did not specify the weapons, which Sarkisian said, were acquired by the Armenian military in 2015.

Ohanian said in late January Armenia is continuing to acquire “long-range and precision-guided” weapons for its armed forces thanks to its close military ties with Russia. He gave no details of those supplies.

A Russian-Armenian intergovernmental commission on bilateral “military-technical cooperation” met in Yerevan earlier in January. According to the Armenian Defense Ministry, Russian arms supplies were on the agenda of the four-day meeting.

Ohanian thanked Moscow for its “huge” military assistance to Yerevan when he met with Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu in Moscow in December.

In mid-February, Moscow disclosed the types of new military hardware, which Armenia will buy from Russia soon with a $200 million Russian loan allocated last summer. Their long list includes, among other things, devastating multiple-launch rocket systems, heavy flamethrowers and advanced anti-tank missiles.

As of last July, the two sides were also reportedly negotiating on the delivery of sophisticated Russian Iskander-M missiles to the Armenian army. With a firing range of up to 500 kilometers, the Iskander-M systems would make Azerbaijan’s vital oil and gas infrastructure even more vulnerable to Armenian missile strikes in the event of a renewed war for Nagorno-Karabakh.

According to his press office, Sarkisian on Monday also spoke about last year’s upsurge in deadly ceasefire violations in the Karabakh conflict zone as well as the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine. The Armenian president went on to answer a “wide range” of security-related questions asked by army officers. No further details were reported.

The military alliance with Russia has enabled Armenia to at least partly offset Azerbaijan’s decade-long military buildup fueled by oil massive revenues. The sharp fall in oil prices may have put an end to that buildup.

Azerbaijan’s defense budget for this year is projected at an equivalent of $1.3 billion. Only four years ago, President Ilham Aliyev declared that Azerbaijani military expenditure has surpassed Armenia’s entire state budget worth about $3 billion.

Turkish Kosovo PM is head of human organ and arms ring, Council of Europe reports

February 2, 2016 By administrator

Kosovo PM Two-year inquiry accuses Albanian ‘mafia-like’ crime network of killing Serb prisoners for their kidneys,

Kosovo’s prime minister is the head of a “mafia-like” Albanian group responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs through eastern Europe, according to a Council of Europe inquiry report on organised crime.

Hashim Thaçi is identified as the boss of a network that began operating criminal rackets in the runup to the 1998-99 Kosovo war, and has held powerful sway over the country’s government since.

The report of the two-year inquiry, which cites FBI and other intelligence sources, has been obtained by the Guardian. It names Thaçi as having over the last decade exerted “violent control” over the heroin trade. Figures from Thaçi’s inner circle are also accused of taking captives across the border into Albania after the war, where a number of Serbs are said to have been murdered for their kidneys, which were sold on the black market.

Legal proceedings began in a Pristina district court today into a case of alleged organ trafficking discovered by police in 2008. That case – in which organs are said to have been taken from impoverished victims at a clinic known as Medicus – is said by the report to be linked to Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) organ harvesting in 2000. It comes at a crucial period for Kosovo, which on Sunday held its first elections since declaring independence from Serbia in 2008. Thaçi claimed victory in the election and has been seeking to form a coalition with opposition parties.

Dick Marty, the human rights investigator behind the inquiry, will present his report to European diplomats from all 47 member states at a meeting in Paris on Thursday. His report suggests Thaçi’s links with organised crime date back more than a decade, when those loyal to his Drenica group came to dominate the KLA, and seized control of “most of the illicit criminal enterprises” in which Kosovans were involved south of the border, in Albania.

During the Kosovo conflict Slobodan Miloševic’s troops responded to attacks by the KLA by orchestrating a horrific campaign against ethnic Albanians in the territory. As many as 10,000 are estimated to have died at the hands of Serbian troops.

While deploring Serb atrocities, Marty said the international community chose to ignore suspected war crimes by the KLA, “placing a premium instead on achieving some degree of short-term stability”. He concludes that during the Kosovo war and for almost a year after, Thaçi and four other members of the Drenica group named in the report carried out “assassinations, detentions, beatings and interrogations”. This same hardline KLA faction has held considerable power in Kosovo’s government over the last decade, with the support of western powers keen to ensure stability in the fledgling state.

The report paints a picture in which ex-KLA commanders have played a crucial role in the region’s criminal activity. It says: “In confidential reports spanning more than a decade, agencies dedicated to combating drug smuggling in at least five countries have named Hashim Thaçi and other members of his Drenica group as having exerted violent control over the trade in heroin and other narcotics.”

Marty says: “Thaçi and these other Drenica group members are consistently named as ‘key players’ in intelligence reports on Kosovo’s mafia-like structures of organised crime. I have examined these diverse, voluminous reports with consternation and a sense of moral outrage.”

His inquiry was commissioned after the former chief prosecutor for war crimes at the Hague, Carla Del Ponte, said she had been prevented from investigating senior KLA officials. Her most shocking claim, which she said required further investigation, was that the KLA smuggled captive Serbs across the border into Albania, where their organs were harvested.

The report, which states that it is not a criminal investigation and unable to pronounce judgments of guilt or innocence, gives some credence to Del Ponte’s claims.

It finds the KLA did hold mostly Serb captives in a secret network of six detention facilities in northern Albania, and that Thaçi’s Drenica group “bear the greatest responsibility” for prisons and the fate of those held in them.

They include a “handful” of prisoners said to have been transferred to a makeshift prison just north of Tirana, where they were killed for their kidneys.

The report states: “As and when the transplant surgeons were confirmed to be in position and ready to operate, the captives were brought out of the ‘safe house’ individually, summarily executed by a KLA gunman, and their corpses transported swiftly to the operating clinic.”

The same Kosovan and foreign individuals involved in the macabre killings are linked to the Medicus case, the report finds.

Marty is critical of the western powers which have provided a supervisory role in Kosovo’s emergence as a state, for failing to hold senior figures, including Thaçi, to account. His report criticises “faltering political will on the part of the international community to effectively prosecute the former leaders of the KLA”.

It concludes: “The signs of collusion between the criminal class and the highest political and institutional office holders are too numerous and too serious to be ignored.

“It is a fundamental right of Kosovo’s citizens to know the truth, the whole truth, and also an indispensable condition for reconciliation between the communities and the country’s prosperous future.”

If as expected the report is formally adopted by the committee this week, the findings will go before the parliamentary assembly next year.

The Kosovo government tonight dismissed the allegations, claiming they were the produce of “despicable and bizarre actions by people with no moral credibility”.

“Today, the Guardian published an article that referred to a report from a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Dick Marty, which follows up on past reports published over the last 12 years aiming at maligning the war record of the Kosovo Liberation Army and its leaders,” it said in a statement.

“The allegations have been investigated several times by local and international judiciary, and in each case, it was concluded that such statements have were not based on facts and were construed to damage the image of Kosovo and the war of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

“It is clear that someone wants to place obstacles in the way of prime minister, Hashim Thaçi, after the general election, in which the people of Kosovo placed their clear and significant trust in him to deliver the development programme and governance of our country.

“Such despicable and bizarre actions by people with no moral credibility, serve the ends of only those specific circles that do not wish well to Kosovo and its people.”

• This article was amended on 15 December 2010. The original dated the Kosovo conflict to 1999 alone. This has been clarified.

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/14/kosovo-prime-minister-llike-mafia-boss

Turkey: Young Kurds take up arms as clashes increase in Turkish Kurdistan

August 27, 2015 By administrator

Kurdish youth fighting security forces in Sirnak province in Turkish Kurdistan, August 2015. Photo: Twitter

CIZRE, Turkey’s Kurdish region,— In Kurdish parlance, “going up to the mountains” has always meant joining the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), the armed group ensconced in the highlands of Iraqi Kurdistan. But in Cizre, a Kurdish town in Turkish Kurdistan on the border with Syria, the phrase may be losing its meaning amid a violent stand-off between Kurdish militants and Turkish security forces.

“We don’t need to join the PKK, because the PKK is the people,” says Ridvan, a young local, as he picks up his automatic rifle and prepares to go on patrol, a woollen balaclava pulled over his face.

Six of his friends, all in their late teens or early 20s and armed with machine guns follow him. One of them is carrying an rocket-propelled grenade. (Their names, and Ridvan’s, have been changed.) Some members of the squad refer to themselves as the Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDG-H). Others do not appear attached to the name. “Call us whatever you like,” says one. “There’s no difference between us and the PKK.”

Over the past month and a half, according to figures cited in the Turkish media, clashes in the Kurdish south-east have claimed the lives of at least 60 members of Turkey’s security forces, 88 militants, and 15 civilians. Police have also rounded up over 1,000 suspected PKK sympathisers in operations across Turkey and have declared over 100 areas in the south-east “special security zones”.

The fighting began when the PKK claimed responsibility for the assassination of two Turkish policemen in what it referred to as retaliation for a July 20 suicide attack linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) in a Kurdish town that killed 33 people, most of them Kurdish activists.

The PKK has accused the government of complicity and negligence in the attack. The government responded with a military offensive, including air strikes against PKK targets in northern Iraq, killing over 800 insurgents, according to the semi-official Anadolu Agency. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, once credited with granting Turkey’s 15m Kurds new cultural rights, has since been accused of stoking violence in the south-east to shore up the nationalist vote ahead of snap elections this autumn.

The unrest reached Cizre at the end of July when Abdullah Ozdal, 23, was gunned down during street protests. Just days later another young man, Hasan Nerse, 17, was killed by police. Locals, as well as the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP), allege he was shot at close range after being handcuffed.

Anticipating arrests, militants across Cizre raised barricades, dug ditches, and mined a number of roads to prevent police vehicles from entering their neighbourhoods. A policeman, Salih Huseyin Parca, was killed here two weeks ago in a PKK rocket attack. A civilian died when a roadside bomb planted by the militants exploded under his car.
The town shuts down early. “In the summer, this place used to be buzzing until one or two in the morning,” says Kadir Kunur, the HDP co-mayor. “Now it’s a ghost town at night.”

Armed groups appear to be in control of large parts of the city, as well as a number of other towns in the south-east, patrolling streets, raising new barricades, and staging regular attacks on police targets.

The sight of locals sporting rocket launchers inside the city has raised eyebrows in Cizre, where clashes between the PKK and the Turkish army claimed scores of lives in the 1990s.

“A few years ago, these kids were throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at police, and some went to jail. Now they have guns,” says Cihan Olmez, a local journalist, who reports seeing well over 100 young gunmen in Cizre this month.

“The PKK is a organisation that learns,” says Nihat Ali Oczan, a former major in the Turkish army and security analyst. “In the 1990s their strategy did not work, but now they have adapted, they have decentralised, giving a bigger role to volunteers and local groups.”

“The difference this time around is both sides, but especially the PKK, have had time to prepare and train,” says Aliza Marcus, a Washington-based Kurdish expert.

The Cizre militants deny taking orders from the PKK leadership in northern Iraq, insisting their decision to take up arms was their own. They also have little patience for ceasefire calls made by their own politicians, including the

HDP, which won 92 per cent of the vote in Cizre during parliamentary elections this June and garnered 13 per cent of the vote nationally.

“Let them appeal for peace, but the only one who can make us lay down our guns is Apo,” says Hewal, another young militant, referring to the PKK’s jailed leader, Abdullah Ocalan, who was central to peace talks but has been denied a chance to meet visiting delegations of HDP lawmakers, his main channel to the outside world, since April.

The war in Syria has added to the mobilisation of young Kurds in Cizre, with scores slipping across the nearby border to join the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a PKK offshoot, to fight Isis militants.

Not so Hewal and his group, who take positions atop a barricade looking out for approaching police vehicles. “We didn’t go to the mountains and we didn’t go to Syria, because we guessed this was coming,” says Ridvan. “Now the war is right here.”

Turkey accused of sending arms to Syrian jihadis VIDEO

May 29, 2015 By administrator

Images and video footage allegedly showing trucks belonging to Turkey’s state intelligence service carrying weapons en route to jihadist rebels in Syria were published Friday in a Turkish daily, AFP reports.

The Turkish government has vehemently denied earlier claims that it is arming rebels fighting in Syria and accused dozens of prosecutors, soldiers and security officers involved in the searching of trucks of attempting to bring it down by suggesting that it is doing so.

Earlier this month, Turkey arrested four prosecutors who ordered searches in a similar incident in January 2014 and they are now in prison pending trial.

More than 30 security officers involved in that interception also face charges including military espionage and attempting to overthrow the government.

The footage published on opposition Cumhuriyet daily’s website Friday shows inspectors searching a metallic container watched by security officers, a prosecutor and sniffer dogs.

The officials first open cardboard boxes marked as “fragile” and full of antibiotics. But under those boxes they find dozens of mortar shells, the video, shot by an anonymous bystander, appears to show.

Cumhuriyet, which also published a series of still images, said the weapons were of Russian origin and had been supplied from ex-Soviet countries.

The daily claimed the trucks were carrying a total of 1,000 mortar shells, 80,000 rounds of ammunition for light and heavy weapons as well as hundreds of grenade launchers.

Source: Panorama.a

Reuters Exclusive: Turkish intelligence helped ship arms to Syrian Islamist rebel areas

May 21, 2015 By administrator

ADANA, Turkey | By Humeyra Pamuk and Nick Tattersall

A locally made shell is launched by rebel fighters towards forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad at the frontline in al-Breij district of Aleppo December 10, 2014. REUTERS/Sultan Kitaz

Turkey’s state intelligence agency helped deliver arms to parts of Syria under Islamist rebel control during late 2013 and early 2014, according to a prosecutor and court testimony from gendarmerie officers seen by Reuters.

The witness testimony contradicts Turkey’s denials that it sent arms to Syrian rebels and, by extension, contributed to the rise of Islamic State, now a major concern for the NATO member.

Syria and some of Turkey’s Western allies say Turkey, in its haste to see President Bashar al-Assad toppled, let fighters and arms over the border, some of whom went on to join the Islamic State militant group which has carved a self-declared caliphate out of parts of Syria and Iraq.

Ankara has denied arming Syria’s rebels or assisting hardline Islamists. Diplomats and Turkish officials say it has in recent months imposed tighter controls on its borders.

Testimony from gendarmerie officers in court documents reviewed by Reuters allege that rocket parts, ammunition and semi-finished mortar shells were carried in trucks accompanied by state intelligence agency (MIT) officials more than a year ago to parts of Syria under Islamist control.

Four trucks were searched in the southern province of Adana in raids by police and gendarmerie, one in November 2013 and the three others in January 2014, on the orders of prosecutors acting on tip-offs that they were carrying weapons, according to testimony from the prosecutors, who now themselves face trial.

While the first truck was seized, the three others were allowed to continue their journey after MIT officials accompanying the cargo threatened police and physically resisted the search, according to the testimony and prosecutor’s report.

President Tayyip Erdogan has said the three trucks stopped on Jan. 19 belonged to MIT and were carrying aid.

“Our investigation has shown that some state officials have helped these people deliver the shipments,” prosecutor Ozcan Sisman, who ordered the search of the first truck on Nov. 7 2013 after a tip-off that it was carrying weapons illegally, told Reuters in a interview on May 4 in Adana.

Both Sisman and Takci have since been detained on the orders of state prosecutors and face provisional charges, pending a full indictment, of carrying out an illegal search.

The request for Sisman’s arrest, issued by the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) and also seen by Reuters, accuses him of revealing state secrets and tarnishing the government by portraying it as aiding terrorist groups.

Sisman and Takci deny the charges.

“It is not possible to explain this process, which has become a total massacre of the law,” Alp Deger Tanriverdi, a lawyer representing both Takci and Sisman, told Reuters.

“Something that is a crime cannot possibly be a state secret.”

More than 30 gendarmerie officers involved in the Jan. 1 attempted search and the events of Jan. 19 also face charges such as military espionage and attempting to overthrow the government, according to an April 2015 Istanbul court document.

An official in Erdogan’s office said Erdogan had made his position clear on the issue. Several government officials contacted by Reuters declined to comment further. MIT officials could not immediately be reached.

“I want to reiterate our official line here, which has been stated over and over again ever since this crisis started by our prime minister, president and foreign minister, that Turkey has never sent weapons to any group in Syria,” Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said on Wednesday at an event in Washington.

Erdogan has said prosecutors had no authority to search MIT vehicles and were part of what he calls a “parallel state” run by his political enemies and bent on discrediting the government.

“Who were those who tried to stop MIT trucks in Adana while we were trying to send humanitarian aid to Turkmens?,” Erdogan said in a television interview last August.

“Parallel judiciary and parallel security … The prosecutor hops onto the truck and carries out a search. You can’t search an MIT truck, you have no authority.”

‘TARNISHING THE GOVERNMENT’

One of the truck drivers, Murat Kislakci, was quoted as saying the cargo he carried on Jan. 19 was loaded from a foreign plane at Ankara airport and that he had carried similar shipments before. Reuters was unable to contact Kislakci.

Witness testimony seen by Reuters from a gendarme involved in a Jan. 1, 2014 attempt to search another truck said MIT officials had talked about weapons shipments to Syrian rebels from depots on the border. Reuters was unable to confirm this.

At the time of the searches, the Syrian side of the border in Hatay province, which neighbors Adana, was controlled by hardline Islamist rebel group Ahrar al-Sham.

The Salafist group included commanders such as Abu Khaled al-Soury, also known as Abu Omair al-Shamy, who fought alongside al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden and was close to its current chief Ayman al-Zawahiri. Al-Soury was killed in by a suicide attack in Syrian city of Aleppo in February 2014.

A court ruling calling for the arrest of three people in connection with the truck stopped in November 2013 said it was loaded with metal pipes manufactured in the Turkish city of Konya which were identified as semi-finished parts of mortars.

The document also cites truck driver Lutfi Karakaya as saying he had twice carried the same shipment and delivered it to a field around 200 meters beyond a military outpost in Reyhanli, a stone’s throw from Syria.

The court order for Karakaya’s arrest, seen by Reuters, cited a police investigation which said that the weapons parts seized that day were destined for “a camp used by the al Qaeda terrorist organization on the Syrian border”.

Reuters was unable to interview Karakaya or to independently confirm the final intended destination of the cargo.

Sisman said it was a tip-off from the police that prompted him to order the thwarted search on Jan. 1, 2014.

“I did not want to prevent its passage if it belonged to MIT and carried aid but we had a tip off saying this truck was carrying weapons. We were obliged to investigate,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Ercan Gurses in Ankara; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Anna Willard)

Turkey would oppose US arms transfers to Kurds

October 19, 2014 By administrator

By ELENA BECATOROS and SUZAN FRASER

SURUC, Turkey (AP) — Turkey would not agree to any U.S. arms transfers to Kurdish fighters who are battling Islamic militants in Syria, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was quoted as saying Sunday, as the extremist group fired more mortar rounds near the Syrian-Turkish border.

Turkey views the main Syrian Kurdish group, the PYD — and its military wing which is fighting the Islamic State militants — as an extension of the PKK, which has waged a 30-year insurgency in Turkey and is designated a terrorist group by the United States and NATO.

The United States has said recently that it has engaged in intelligence sharing with Kurdish fighters and officials have not ruled out future arms transfers to the Kurdish fighters.

“The PYD is for us, equal to the PKK. It is a terror organization,” Erdogan told a group of reporters on his return from a visit to Afghanistan.

“It would be wrong for the United States — with whom we are friends and allies in NATO — to expect us to say ‘yes’ to such a support to a terrorist organization,” Erdogan said. His comments were reported by the state-run Anadolu agency on Sunday.

Turkey’s opposition to arms transfers to the Kurdish forces is hampering the U.S.-led coalitions’ efforts to fight the extremists and further complicating relations between Turkey and the United States. The countries are involved in negotiations about Ankara’s role with the U.S. and NATO allies fighting the Islamic State group, which is attempting to capture the strategic town Kobani on the Syrian-Turkish border.

Turkey is demanded that the coalition widen its campaign against the militants by providing greater aid to Syrian rebels, who are battling both the IS and President Bashar Assad’s forces. Turkey has so far provided sanctuary to an estimated 200,000 Syrians fleeing Kobani, and recently agreed to train and equip moderate Syrian rebel fighters trying to remove Assad from power.

Fighting between the Islamic militants and the Kurdish fighters defending Kobani continued on Sunday. Mortar strikes hit the town, sending plumes of smoke into the air. Three mortars also fell on the Turkish side of the border, landing in an open field where they caused no injuries. On Saturday and Sunday, IS appeared to be targeting the border crossing area, potentially in a bid to hamper Kobani’s last link to the outside world.

In an attempt to stave off the advance, a US-led coalition has been carrying out airstrikes on IS positions in and near the town, as well as in other parts of Syria, particularly in the oil-rich eastern province of Deir el-Zour, as well as in Iraq. Several airstrikes hit Kobani on Saturday evening.

The flow of migrants into Turkey has intensified since IS intensified its push to take Kobani and cut access for Kurdish fighters to other areas of Syria they control.

The United Nations’ humanitarian chief, Valerie Amos, visited one of the refugee camps set up in a school in the Turkish border town of Suruc.

While 900,000 people have been registered as refugees in Turkey since the Syrian crisis began four years ago, “the reality is that the numbers are nearer to 1.6 million,” Amos said.

“Of course countries have concerns about security, and about the impact on their economies and on essential services like health and education. But it’s also a crisis with a huge human impact,” she said. “The international community has to continue to do all it can to find a political solution to this crisis.”