SURUC, Turkey — Airstrikes hit Islamic State military sites early Wednesday, targeting eight Kurdish villages that the militants had seized in recent days in northern Syria near the Turkish border, residents reported.
It was not immediately clear who carried out the strikes, but the Syrian government has not previously conducted operations in the area. Residents said they believed the air attacks were carried out by the American-led coalition against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
The strikes took place overnight; at daybreak Islamic State fighters resumed their offensive on the Kurdish villages, residents reported.
The advance of the Islamic State has spread fear among Kurds, who have been harassed by the extremist militants in both Iraq and Syria. The assault has driven at least 150,000 Syrian Kurdish villagers into Turkey, one of the most dramatic flows of refugees in the three years of the Syrian conflict, and has fueled a mushrooming humanitarian crisis on the border as some refugees are turned away by the Turkish authorities.
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Refugees from Syria waited at the Turkish border near Sanliurfa, Turkey, on Wednesday. Turkey is wary that the fight against the Islamic State is empowering separatist Kurdish militants on both sides of the border. Credit Sedat Suna/European Pressphoto Agency
Khoshnaw Tillo, who heads a Syrian-Kurdish community organization, said from Gaziantep, Turkey, that contacts inside Syria reported the strikes to the west and south of the Kobani area, the region of Kurdish villages in northern Syria that has been attacked by the Islamic State.
Witnesses interviewed by Reuters said that warplanes arriving from Turkish airspace headed toward Islamic State positions. They said that the Turkish police used tear gas to drive crowds of Syrian Kurds back from the border.
Reuters also reported five new airstrikes on the Syrian-Iraqi border.
Turkish officials said that neither Turkish airspace nor an American air base in the southern Turkish town of Incirlik had been used for the strikes, according to Reuters.
The reported strikes came a day after the first air raids inside Syria by the United States-led coalition against the Islamic State, the extremist militant group that has seized areas of Iraq and Syria.
The chaotic scene on the Turkish-Syria border underscored the complexity of the conflict into which the United States is now inserting itself, with far more force than during the three years of the Syrian civil war.
Turkey, a NATO member, has said it will participate in the coalition against the Islamic State but is wary that the fight against the group is empowering separatist Kurdish militants on both sides of the border.
Kurds as well as the Syrian government view Turkey’s involvement with some skepticism. Turkey’s open border with Syria has long facilitated the movements of Islamic State recruits from foreign countries into Syria.
Humanitarian groups say more people are trying to flee Kobani but that thousands are trapped in Syria because the Turkish authorities are blocking the border. That has made the Kurdish population even more restive.
Turkish police officers and soldiers stand guard across dusty fields with riot shields and armored vehicles, having already set up metal gates to control the refugee flow from Syria. Nearby, knots of women sat in brightly-colored long dresses on the ground as the hot wind whipped dirt onto their faces, unsure of where to head to after having made it across the border. Those allowed in, mostly women and children, said that people on the Syrian side were in need of food and water and that livestock were dying of thirst. After having arrived in Turkey, refugees were sleeping in streets and storefronts for lack of shelter, the people said.
Turkish Kurds have also been flowing into Syria to fight the Islamic State, multiple residents said. At the border, hundreds of cars and herds of sheep and goats were lined up behind the fence.
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