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50 Turkish citizens, included in ISIS, work in the municipalities of the Turkish cities, whose mayors are members of the Justice and Development Party.
Turkey’s state security authorities checked the data received from the U.S. and European intelligence agencies, the Turkish newspaper Taraf reports. 50 citizens of Turkey, who joined ISIS and fought in Syria for some time, turned out to have begun working as civil servants in the municipalities of a number of Turkish cities upon returning home.
BY PATRICK HILL , ED WIGHT
Bosnia, Heartlands: The ISIS stronghold is not mapped by GPS
Security services think the area in Bosnia is used for ISIS training camps and could be a base for devastating terror attacks on the West, Islamic State have established a stronghold in mainland Europe, a Sunday Mirror investigation reveals. Report mirror.co.uk Visit the site to see Video of Bosnian children training in Syria
Terrorists are secretly buying land in an isolated village, surrounded by deep woodland.
Security services think the area in Bosnia is used for ISIS training camps and could be a base for devastating terror attacks on the West.
Crucially, the location gives IS a key strategic position due to its proximity to the Mediterranean which is used by extremists from Syria, Iraq and North Africa.
At least 12 ISIS fighters trained in the village of Osve have left for Syria in recent months and five are reported to be dead.
Terror expert Dzevad Galijasevic said: “From this village a large number of people went to Syria and are going constantly.
“The chosen location of some of the properties is on a hill, where there is no possibility to approach without being seen. It is clear that the source of the terrorist threat is right there. It is a major threat.
“There is no one there who isn’t ready to respond to the summons to jihad.”
We visited the hilltop village 60 miles from Sarajevo and six miles from the town of Maglaj afternoon.
It is not mapped by GPS and is only accessible by steep and winding roads barely wide enough for cars to pass.
A number of houses there appear to have been abandoned or only half built and it is not overlooked by any other settlement.
A number of villagers wore Islamic-style clothing, including two women wearing burkas.
Our guide – our driver and translator – said we were being watched and it was too dangerous to photograph them.
Clearly worried, the dad-of-one said: “We should leave now – our presence here is beginning to cause suspicion. This is a beautiful place but is incredibly dangerous.
“You cannot underestimate the possible threat here. If they see the camera all hell will break loose.”
It is understood that notorious ISIS supporter Harun Mehicevic is among fanatics who bought land in the area. He has purchased two hectares.
Mehicevic fled Bosnia during the 1990s Balkan wars and settled in Melbourne, Australia, where he is considered one of the country’s most dangerous men.
In one ranting sermon, he reportedly told an audience of potential recruits: “Allah will help the mujahideen (holy warriors) establish an Islamic State where Muslims can live with dignity and honour.”
Other known terrorists believed to have bought land in the village include Jasin Rizvic and Osman Kekic, who are both now fighting with ISIS in Syria.
Muslim leader Izet Hadzic – arrested by Bosnia’ and Herzegovina’s security service Sipa in a raid – is also understood to have property in the village, as have many others who have gone to fight in Syria and Iraq.
One villager told our investigators that locals fear the area is a “nest for terrorists”.
The man, who does not want to be named, said: “We regularly hear gunshots coming from the woods up there for long periods at a time. It happens every week.
“I don’t know what they are doing, whether it is target practice or something like that, but it happens regularly. “It is really concerning to hear such notorious members of ISIS are buying land. They keep themselves to themselves but it is better not to ask questions.
“It worries me that I am bringing up my children here. Now could be time to move out but it is not so easy to sell.”
Bosnia is an ideal position for jihadis travelling illegally from Syria to Greece, via Turkey, and then through Macedonia and Serbia.
Guns and other weapons are easier to obtain in Bosnia than in other parts of Europe due to illegal ownership following the conflicts of the 1990s.
Five months ago, anti-terror cops raided the village of Gornja Maoca in the north of the country following reports of houses flying the ISIS flag.
The area is home to followers of the strict Sunni Islam Wahhabi movement. It has been raided by police several times over the past decade due to suspected links with radical groups.
A report on jihadism in Bosnia said: “Returning foreign fighters from Syria and Iraq – battle-hardened, skilled in handling arms and explosives, and ideologically radicalised – pose a direct threat not only to the security of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also of the region and beyond.” The report, The Lure of the Syrian War: The Foreign Fighters’ Bosnian Contingent, said that between 2013 and 2014, 156 Bosnian men and 36 women travelled to Syria, taking 25 children with them.
It said 48 men and three women had officially returned by last January.
The authors, Sarajevo University associate political science professor Vlado Azinovic and Islamic theologian Muhamed Jusic, also found that Bosnia was ill-prepared to deal with the threat.
The report said: “There is a lack of co-ordination between local law-enforcement agencies on (foreign fighter) issues.”
Kristina Jozic of security service Sipa said: “The return of individuals participating in the conflict in Syria, fighting with ISIS, is undoubtedly a security challenge and a threat, the extent of which is hard to determine.”
She said: “Sipa continuously performs checks of all allegations that can be linked to terrorist activities in any way, whether that is financing, recruiting or other activities related to terrorism.”
She added that the village is under surveillance following a police raid in May.
Director of the Centre for Security Studies in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, Armin Krzalic, said: “Bosnians who went to fight for Islamic State will be treated as a threat to security upon their return whether they have land here or not.”
An activist group and the main Kurdish militia in Syria said Kurdish fighters have besieged members of the Islamic State group in the northeastern city of Hassakeh, the Associated Press reports.
Kurdish official Mustafa Bali says members of the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, have cut all the roads linking Hassakeh with nearby IS strongholds in the province.
The IS group attacked several government-held southern neighborhoods in Hassakeh last month and troops have failed to retake the areas.
YPG fighters joined the battle, recently capturing several villages south of Hassakeh.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the YPG said Kurdish fighters captured a juvenile prison and a power station south of Hassakeh on Wednesday.
Before IS captured parts of Hassakeh last month, the city had been split between government and Kurdish forces.
By Zvi Bar’el
Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani in the background, June 27, 2015. Photo by Reuters
The Bab al-Hawa border crossing between Turkey and Syria gained a new status this week. Customs officers will now man the Syrian side, checking the contents of trucks entering and leaving Turkey. “Interior Ministry” officials will stamp passports and laissez-passer documents.
The iron gate was restored after being damaged in the fighting; it now looks like any other crossing between the two countries, except that the officials on the Syrian side aren’t from the government. They’re rebels who’ve captured Idlib Province. Report haaretz
But that’s not the whole picture. There’s also the Ahrar al-Sham militia, which constitutes part of the Al-Fatah Army, which in turn includes radical Islamist militias, some of them on the list of terror groups.
These, by the way, are the same “moderate militias” the Western countries, particularly the United States, are willing to cooperate with. The Bab al-Hawa crossing serves as a test case for formal ties between Turkey and Idlib, where the people have started using the Turkish lira as legal tender. If this model works, the sides hope to expand to other crossings in rebel hands.
In contrast to this normalization, Turkey is widening its military campaign against the Kurds in Syria, whom it views as a graver threat than the Islamic State. The Turks fear a Kurdish state on their border.
The zone, declared autonomous by the Kurds, is run by the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, which supports the PKK — declared a terror group by Turkey. Reports of Kurds expelling Arabs and replacing them with Kurds feed this fear. Kurdish denials of these reports hardly impress Turkey.
“We won’t allow the establishment of a Kurdish state on our border,” declared Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who’s in the middle of coalition talks. If not a Kurdish state, what about an ISIS state?
The political battle inside Turkey has been affected by what happens on the Syrian border, culminating last week with leaks in the Turkish opposition press about Ankara’s intention to invade Syria, set up a security zone for refugees and thereby prevent Kurdish control of the border zones.
The Turkish opposition made clear the interim Turkish government has no authority to go to war in Syria. Davutoglu countered that in matters of defense the government has full authority to take steps it deems necessary.
He was convinced that as on previous occasions, national security would suffice for the government to do as it wished. Turkey was planning to send 18,000 troops 30 kilometers deep and 90 to 110 kilometers wide to set up refugee camps, but the plan was actually designed to set up a buffer zone between the two Kurdish-controlled areas.
But Erdogan realized that not only did the opposition — some of them potential coalition partners — object, but the army wasn’t rushing to battle. The high command demanded clearly written directives from the politicians for fear of violating international law. It also demanded that the government consult with Russia and Iran to ensure that Turkish military involvement wouldn’t spur direct involvement by those countries.
It’s a weighty argument, though the army didn’t hesitate a few months ago to enter Syria to capture the ancient tomb of Suleyman Shah and rescue Turkish soldiers guarding it. The main reason for the army’s objection this time was the understanding that any invasion of Syria to establish a buffer zone meant long-term involvement in the Syrian war.
The public dispute between the army and government laid bare something in the wake of Erdogan’s expulsion of the army from politics: The army still has widespread support and can challenge the president, even after Erdogan made changes to the high command.
Erdogan held an urgent meeting of the National Security Council, resulting in the decision not to invade Syria. At the same time, Turkey deployed tanks and other armor along the border near the cities of Sanliurfa and Gaziantep, a few kilometers from the Syrian border where the Syrian Kurds are in control.
Despite Erdogan’s efforts, these Kurdish militias, which have recruited a few hundred volunteers from abroad, are winning. The fighters have driven Islamic State forces out of dozens of villages along the border, helped from the air by Western, particularly American, planes.
American praise for the Kurds showed Erdogan that the Kurdish threat isn’t only on the border. The Kurds have become Washington’s ally, and Erdogan’s plan to block their control of the border region is doomed to failure. Special U.S. envoy John Allen visited Turkey to express Washington’s objections to a Turkish operation in Syria.
Officially, Allen discussed possible military cooperation with Turkey, but in practice Washington clarified its opposition to a buffer zone and warned against Turkey’s continued cooperation with radical forces in Syria, based on reports that the Islamic State continues to use Turkish border crossings to reach Syria.
The United States is struggling to establish rebel ground forces to operate in tandem with airstrikes. The effort to recruit rebels for this grandiose plan in the war against the Islamic State, for which Congress has allocated $500 million to train 3,000 fighters, is facing intense difficulties. According to Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, only 60 of 7,000 volunteers have been trained so far.
While the air campaign has stung some of the Islamic State’s income sources and halted its progress at least in Iraq, it’s far from turning things around. The control territory between the militias and the government is becoming permanent, without any side capable of making a decisive blow.
TEL AVIV – Egypt is accusing Turkey of providing more than 10,000 Turkish passports to members of ISIS, the Islamic State, to facilitate travel of fighters across the region.
The official further charged that Istanbul is serving as the “headquarters” for ISIS planning. Report wnd.com
“Turkey continues to allow free passage to Iraq and Syria to IS fighters,” the official added.
If the Turkish passport charge is true, it would present a worldwide ISIS travel threat.
Already, there have been major passport concerns regarding ISIS and its sympathizers.
Earlier this month, a French senate report showed about 47 percent of European jihadists known to have traveled to ISIS-held territory hold French passports.
Scores of British citizens are also known to have joined ISIS. Last month, nine British medical students reportedly travel`ed to Syria to work in hospitals in areas held by ISIS.
In a move that clearly is part of the terrorist group’s symbolic creation of a caliphate, ISIS militants themselves reportedly started issuing their own international ISIS passports.
There are concerns ISIS plans to expand beyond the Middle East to Europe.
In February, WND reported documents released by ISIS supporters and propagandists revealed ISIS is planning to use Libya as a “gateway” to Europe.
The documents, obtained by the Quilliam Foundation, a Britain-based think tank that focuses on counter-extremism, raised the possibility of storming southern European cities to cause “pandemonium” or closing international shipping lines in the Mediterranean Sea.
The purported ISIS documents, obtained and reviewed by WND, received widespread news coverage.
However, some of the more sensational possibilities described within the pages were largely overlooked.
The documents indicate ISIS views Libya as not just fertile ground for a headquarters but as a staging base to infiltrate Europe by boat along with the hundreds of migrants who daily attempt to flee to Italy.
One ISIS document recognized Libya has a “long coastline” that “looks upon the southern Crusader states, which can be reached with ease by even a rudimentary boat.”
The document notes “the number of ‘illegal immigration’ trips from this coast is massive, estimated to be as high as 500 people a day, as a low estimate.”
It states that “according to many [of these immigrants], it is easily possible to pass through Maritime Security Checkpoints and arrive in [European] cities.”
“If this was even partially exploited and developed strategically, pandemonium could be wrought in the southern Europe. It is even possible that there could be a closure of shipping lines because of the targeting of Crusader ships and tankers.”
The Quillium Foundation warns: “Therefore, the opportunities that lie in the exploitation of human trafficking rings make Libya unparalleled as a launching platform for attacking European states and shipping lines.”
The ISIS documents extensively discuss what they claim are massive caches of light, medium and heavy munitions in Libya. Jihadists are urged to make their way to Libya to help expand the caliphate.
“Not only will pressure on the land of the Caliphate in ash-Sham be relieved, but the territories of the Caliphate in ash-Sham, Iraq and Hijaz will be linked with those of their brothers in Libya and the Islamic Maghreb and the defeat of all regimes and tyrants in their way will be enabled.”
How real are ISIS’s claims of migrant boats flooding Europe?
In February, Italy reportedly rescued some 2,164 migrants coming from Libya on about a dozen boats. The incident took place the same day Italian coast guard members were reportedly threatened by four armed men who approached them by speedboat from the Libyan coast.
The U.N. refugee organization, UNHCR, estimates that at least 218,000 migrants from North Africa crossed the Mediterranean by boat last year, with some 3,500 dying on the way.
Italy’s defense minister, Roberta Pinotti, told the country’s Il Messaggero newspaper in February the potential for terrorists infiltrating Italy in boats carrying immigrants from Libya “could not be ruled out.”
When Erdogan put Davautoglu in Charge for all the False-Flag Operation it was one failure after another, re-member “Davutoglu zero problems with neighbors” now have problem with every neighbor although he had one successes Mosul invasion was successful. now that Davutoglu also lost the June Election and AKP party is divided, moreover recent Kurdish gains and Islamic State Loss therefore Erdogan left one option that is invasion of northern Syria. Ironically Turkey never complained when ISIS where freely roaming across Turkish border. now that the Kurd are pushing ISIS from Turkish border and closing the Turkish supply route on ISIS suddenly Erdogan need to create 50 KM buffer zone interesting ha,
also Read: http://wp.me/p2E179-9Xx
Syrian Kurdish fighters said they had fully secured the town of Kobani near the Turkish border on Saturday and killed more than 60 Islamic State militants, two days after the hardline group launched an incursion with suicide bombers, according to Reuters.
Further east, Islamic State pressed another assault on government-held areas of Hasaka city, clashing with the Syrian army after blowing up a security building late on Friday and triggering a government appeal for residents to take up arms.
“The people of the governorate and its surroundings continue to sign up with the Syrian Arab Army in its fight against terror,” state television said in a news flash on Saturday and played archive footage of soldiers set to rousing music.
Hasaka’s governor described the situation as “fine” but also called on residents to defend it in a phone call with state TV.
The twin assaults on Kobani and Hasaka came after Islamic State suffered two weeks of defeats at the hands of Kurdish-led forces, supported by U.S.-led air strikes.
Redur Xelil, spokesman for the Kurdish YPG militia, said Kobani was quiet and the YPG was combing the town for any hidden Islamic State fighters.
The YPG blew up a school building used by Islamic State in the town earlier on Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said, and plumes of smoke could be seen from the Turkish side of the border rising into the air.
The Observatory said a U.S-led airstrike killed at least 18 Islamic State fighters near Kobani. Islamic State killed around 200 civilians since the assault which started on Thursday, the Observatory said, describing it as one of the worst massacres committed by the group in Syria.
Kobani Canton Defense Minister Ismet Sheikh Hassan. Photo: ANF
KOBANI, Syrian Kurdistan,— All findings on the Islamic State group (IS) attack on border Kobani town of Syrian Kurdistan in which tens of civilians were brutally massacred point at Turkey’s central role in the attack. The Minister of Self-Defense for the Kobani Canton Ismet Sheikh Hassan who spoke to ANF stated that it was impossible to attack the border gate with vehicles full of explosives from anywhere but Turkey.
Tens of civilians, predominantly women and children, were massacred Report Ekurd
IS militants infiltrated into Kobani from Turkey on Thursday and carried out several attacks in and around the city center that claimed the lives of tens of civilians. IS militants blasted a vehicle near Mürşitpınar border gate and attacked the villages of Kaniya Kurda and Berxbatan as well as the Hellince road and the government building with bombs, rifles and snipers. 107 civilians were massacred during the attacks and many others were wounded.
‘YPG/YPJ responded strongly’
YPG/YPJ forces responded strongly to IS attacks and encircled IS groups in Şehid Moro neighborhood, Qada Azadi, Kaniya Kurda and Kobani high school. YPG/YPJ fighters killed tens of IS militants, expulsed all gang members except for the ones in Kobani high school, and caught 3 jihadi militants alive.
An attack similar to the one that happened on november 29
IS militants’ attack on Kobani yesterday resembles the one that happened on November 29 in many aspects. IS members had also crossed into Kobani from Turkey back then and attacked in 3 different locations. Thursday’s attack began with the bomb attack on the border gate and continued in different locations.
The only route to use in the border gate attack: Turkish soil
It is certain that the IS jihadi militants who infiltrated from Turkey carried out the attacks on the border gate and Kaniya Kurda because transportation to these places from another location is geographically impossible. There are dozens of YPG/YPJ checkpoints on the way to the border gate and Kaniya Kurda from within Syria and Rojava, and YPG/YPJ forces prevented previous suicide attack attempts before the jihadists reached the city center.
Cerablus road to the west, Halep road to the south, and the Hellince road to the east of Kobani are the only roads IS militants could have used for transportation, which are under heavy YPG/YPJ control. Even during the IS occupation of Kobani last December, explosive vehicles were blasted and prevented from reaching Kobani by YPG/YPJ fighters. IS militants have been aware of these YPG/YPJ preventions and had not tried similar suicide missions since Kobani resistance.
Attacks came from Turkey
The attacks at the border gate came from Turkey and anyone could see this when they watch the video footage of the explosive vehicle entering Kobani. IS militants who infiltrated in the town from the border gate and Kaniya Kurda had uniforms identical to Turkish military clothes and had shaved their beards in order to pass as Turkish soldiers and avoid detection.
In light of all these events, YPG/YPJ’s main success has been capturing 3 IS militants alive and the information they will give during interrogation will be crucial. Turkey’s gun and personnel support to IS, witness statements, seized documents, and the details of the last IS attack point at Turkey as the center in which this IS massacre was planned.
IS militants coming from Hellince road wore FSA uniforms, the IS militants who attacked the villages nearby had YPG uniforms on them and the IS militants coming from Kaniya Kurda wore Turkish military outfits. This method has also been widely used by the Turkish military in counter guerilla activities in Northern Kurdistan.
Anadolu Agency’s (aa) journalism success!
Another important detail of the attacks is Anadolu Agency’s live coverage of the explosion in the Mürşitpınar border gate. This suggests that either AA was informed about the attacks before they took place, or IS militants shared the video footage of the attack with AA. Either possibility points at the complex relations and cooperation between IS and the Turkish state, since there is no way for AA to provide live coverage for the attacks that were carried out in great secrecy.
‘It is not possible for is to reach the border gate through kobani’
Kobani Canton Defense Minister Sheikh Hassan confirmed our findings on the attacks and said that both the witness statements of YPG/YPJ fighters as well as video recordings confirm these findings.
Sheikh Hassan highlighted the impossibility of bringing explosive vehicles to the border gate through Kobani, and said that they would share more details on the attack in the near future.
Erdogan denies Islamic State launched attack on Syria’s Kobani from Turkey
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday dismissed as “propaganda” accusations that Islamic State fighters had been allowed to cross from Turkey into Syria to launch a fresh assault on the symbolic battleground Kurdish town of Kobani in Syrian Kurdistan.
Copyright ©, respective author or news agency, anfenglish.com | Agencies | Ekurd.net
Kurds fight Kurds in Syria
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey — First Kobani, then Tell Abyad. The two Syrian towns along the Turkish border came under the international spotlight amid monthslong clashes between Kurdish forces and the Islamic State (IS). The People’s Protection Units (YPG) triumphed in both battles, breaking the IS siege of Kobani in January and seizing Tell Abyad earlier this month. Though the two adversaries are poles apart ideologically, they have something in common — their Kurdish fighters. A considerable number of Kurds, most of them from Turkey, have joined the ranks of IS in Syria and Iraq.
The impoverished province of Bingol, home to some 267,000 people, has emerged as a major IS recruitment base in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast. Official figures are not available, but locals estimate at least 600 young men have joined the jihadist group, lured through religious indoctrination and various promises, including money and marriage.
The 18-year-old son of a local grocery owner is one of them. The man, who spoke on condition of anonymity and agreed only to a telephone interview, said he was able to speak only once to his son since he vanished earlier this year.
“My son was a quiet boy. He disappeared two months ago. We wouldn’t have even known he was there [Syria] if he hadn’t called us,” the bereft father told Al-Monitor. “I think he was influenced by friends. I’m just waiting, helpless. I just hope he turns up one day.”
Bingol stands out as a strongly conservative region whose population is overwhelmingly Zaza, an ethnic subgroup in the Kurdish fold. It has long been a major electoral reservoir for conservative and Islamist-leaning parties. The region’s social fabric, however, has propped up not only legal political parties but also outlawed Islamist groups. Militants from Bingol have figured prominently both in the leadership and lower ranks of the Turkish Hezbollah, a Kurdish-dominated Sunni Islamist group with a bloody past. Prominent Hezbollah leader Haci Bayancuk — sentenced to life in 2011 for his role in running the group’s violent campaign in the 1990s — is a native of Bingol. He has been succeeded by his son Halis Bayancuk, known also as Abu Hanzala.
Mehmet Kurt, a Bingol University academic who studied radicalization in Turkey’s southeast during his doctoral studies at London’s Queen Mary University, told Al-Monitor that a complex mix of “strong historic and social dynamics” nourish radicalization in Bingol.
Kurt said that the question of whether Zazas are really Kurdish or not — a debate that has intensified in recent years — contributed to an identity crisis among the Zazas, which often resulted in religious affiliation superseding ethnicity. “This is something the state’s rhetoric has also encouraged,” he said.
“The people’s senses of belonging are often confused and broken. Placing religious identity above ethnic identity becomes easier. For Kurds, in particular, religious identity prevails over ethnicity. Turkey’s assimilationist policies have also contributed to that,” Kurt said. “A Turk could easily define himself as both Muslim and Turkish. For Kurds, however, being Muslim is often perceived as an obstacle to Kurdishness due to historic dynamics and the state’s assimilationist policies. This is especially true for the Zazas in Bingol. Thus, religious identity often takes precedence over ethnic identity and completely obscures it.”
Kurt believes the number of IS militants from Bingol could be lower than 600, but stresses that a large number of people remain potential recruits. To stem the flow, he said, the government needs to step up security measures in the short term and follow up with long-term measures in the socio-economic realm, including education and job creation, to curb radicalization.
While many in Bingol are reluctant to speak openly about relatives with IS, others, like Filit Batir, are not. A retired employee of the local electricity authority, Batir told Al-Monitor how his son Musa, 19, traveled twice to Syria to join first IS and then al-Qaeda before being killed last year in an unknown location.
Batir believes his son was “deceived” into joining the war in Syria, saying he had sought help from the Turkish authorities to get him back, but to no avail. After a first short stint in Syria in 2013, the young man returned to Turkey, but Batir failed to convince him to stay home. Musa ultimately returned in a coffin.
“Shortly after he first went [to Syria], he suddenly came back one day. He didn’t come home but went to his sister in Ankara. I begged him to come home and he finally acquiesced,” Batir said. “He stayed here several months but they took him back again. And one day I got news he was in the hospital in [the Turkish border province of] Hatay. But when I went there, what I received was his body. I brought him home and buried him in our native village.”
Though Bingol has come under the spotlight, Kurds from other regions and various walks of life have also joined IS. In one striking case, an academic at Diyarbakir’s Dicle University, known as a liberal intellectual, lost his three young sons to IS in March.
Tensions between Islamist and nationalist Kurds escalated in October 2014 when some 50 people were killed on both sides in street clashes that erupted during demonstrations against the siege of Kobani and Ankara’s alleged support for the jihadists.
The polarization is perhaps best illustrated in a story of a Kurdish family in Adana, as reported in the Turkish media. The family’s elder son spent a stint with the Kurdistan Workers Party, which has long fought the Turkish state and is closely affiliated with the YPG in Syria. The younger son, meanwhile, joined IS last year. “We’ll behead the YPG guys,” the younger brother reportedly wrote on social media under a picture of himself brandishing a gun.
An estimated 500 Kurds from Iraqi Kurdistan have also joined IS. Most of them are said to be from the Halabja region, which, like Bingol, is known as a conservative stronghold.
Mahmut Bozarslan is based in Diyarbakir, the central city of Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast. A journalist since 1996, he has worked for the mass-circulation daily Sabah, the NTV news channel, Al Jazeera Turk and Agence France-Presse (AFP), covering the many aspects of the Kurdish question, as well as the local economy and women’s and refugee issues. He has frequently reported also from Iraqi Kurdistan. On Twitter: @mahmutbozarslan
Syrian border town of Kobani (Ayn al-Arab)
• Isil reenter Kobane, scene of 4-month battle to January
• Jihadists detonate three bombs near Turkey border
• Syria claims Isil attacked from within Turkey; Turkey denies
• At least 12 dead in Kobane attack; 23 executed in nearby village
• Simultaneous Isil assault on Hasakeh in northeastern Syria
• Separate rebel groups including al-Qaeda attack Daraa in south
CCTV footage captured the moment one of this morning’s car bombs exploded. An Isil Toyota pickup truck can be seen approaching a YPG checkpoint, and then exploding.
As the fallout from today’s attacks begins, questions will be asked as to how a car rammed-full of explosive was able to infiltrate the heart of a town that was meant to have been secured.
The Kurdish militia YPG has begun to “surround” and “sweep the area” where Isil jihadists infiltrated Kobane, spokesman Rêdûr Xelîl told the Telegraph:
Today’s early morning, a group of five cars, loaded with 30-35 of Isil elements, wearing the clothes and raising the flag of the FSA [Free Syrian Army rebels] has undertaken a suicide attack.
They entered from the South and the West sides of Kobane to inside the town. In the beginning they exploded a suicide car bomb near the crossing [with Turkey] then they opened fire randomly at civilians, among them women and children.
Then they infiltrated inside to the neighborhoods. The YPG has started to surround them and sweep the area where they entered.
So far, 15 of this group were killed. Three of them managed to escape to Turkey. There are still some elements hiding inside the city.
The clashes are still going on between Isil elements and the YPG.
So far, we have no confirmed news, if this group entered Kobane though the Turkish borders or not. The primary information and the eye witnesses say that they entered from Turkey but officially we don’t have confirmed information yet.
Isil attacked a village called Barambarkh, near the area of Terreen, 20 km from Kobane. Terreen is a border Zone with Isil. In the village they are talking about 20 civilians [killed] but I don’t know for sure the credibility of this number.
After Isil has lost many strategic areas, it wants to prove to its supporters and its elements that they are still powerful and capable to do a lot of things. So that is why they attacked Kobane and the south part of Hasakeh.
It’s not easy for Isil to return back to Kobane. We are expecting some operations of that kind as we have 400 km of borders with them but it’s difficult for them to return to occupy the area.”