SURUC, Turkey: The new head of Nato said yesterday it would protect member Turkey against attacks from the Islamic State (IS) group, which is fighting to capture territory in Iraq and Syria near the Turkish border.
“Turkey is a Nato ally and our main responsibility is to protect the integrity, the borders of Turkey,” Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters.
“We have deployed Patriot missiles in Turkey, to enhance, to strengthen the air defence of Turkey. And Turkey should know that Nato will be there if there is any spillover, any attacks on Turkey as a consequence of the violence we see in Syria.”
Stoltenberg spoke after meeting with Poland’s defence and foreign ministers in Warsaw, his first foreign visit since taking office last week.
He will also visit Turkey, which is struggling to cope with the spillover from the Syrian and Iraq conflicts.
“I would also like to welcome the actions taken by the United States, of the Nato allies and regional partners to fight ISIL,” he said, referring to air strikes targeting IS in Syria and Iraq.
Turkish lawmakers last week authorised the government to join the campaign against IS, but so far no military plans have been announced.
IS fighters penetrated the key Syrian town of Kobane on the Turkish border, sparking street-to-street fighting with its Kurdish defenders yesterday after a three-week-long siege, a monitoring group said.
“Urban guerrilla warfare has started and the fighting is taking place for the first time in districts at the eastern entrance to Kobane, in Maqtala al-Jadida and Kani Arabane,” Syrian Observatory for Human Rights head Rami Abdel Rahman said.
“The jihadists and the Kurds are clashing in the streets, between apartment buildings,” sending hundreds of civilians into flight towards the Turkish border, he said.
A photographer reported from the Turkish border that two black IS flags were seen flying on Kobane’s eastern side earlier yesterday. The advances came after IS fighters seized part of Mishtenur Hill, which overlooks Kobane, at the weekend, although US-led air strikes tried to slow the jihadists.
The Observatory said at least 20 jihadists were killed late Sunday when they entered an eastern neighbourhood and were ambushed by Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) fighters.
In a sign of mounting desperation, a Kurdish female fighter blew herself up at an IS position east of Kobane on Sunday, the Observatory said.
It was the first reported instance of a female Kurdish fighter employing a tactic often used by the jihadists, said the Britain-based monitor, which has a wide network of sources inside Syria.
The bomber, in her 20s, was a full-time YPG fighter identified as Dilar Gencxemis, alias Arin Mirkan, from Kurdish-controlled Afrin in northwestern Syria.
“She killed dozens of gang members and demonstrated the YPG fighters’ determined resistance,” her group said in a statement carried by the pro-Kurdish Firat news agency. On another front, twin IS suicide truck bombings killed at least 30 YPG fighters and security officers on Monday in the Kurdish town of Hasakeh, northeast Syria, the Observatory said.
Sunday’s fighting around Kobane — also known as Ain al-Arab — killed at least 19 Kurdish fighters and 27 IS jihadists, it added.
The town has become a crucial battleground in the international fight against the jihadists, who sparked further outrage at the weekend with the release of a video showing the beheading of Briton Alan Henning.
The video — the latest in a series of on-camera beheadings of Western hostages —also included a threat to another hostage, US aid worker Peter Kassig.
His parents have issued a video plea for their son’s release, urging his captors to show mercy towards the 26-year-old former US soldier who has converted to Islam.
They also revealed Kassig had set them a letter in June.
“I am obviously pretty scared to die but the hardest part is not knowing, wondering, hoping and wondering if I should even hope at all,” Kassig wrote.
IS began advancing on Kobane on September 16, seeking to cement its grip over a long stretch of the Syria-Turkey border.
AFP
PARIS: A former French intelligence officer who defected to Al Qaeda was targeted by US air strikes in Syria last month, US media reported yesterday in an account promptly denied by Paris.
The alleged defector was associated with Al Qaeda militants in Syria suspected of plotting to smuggle non-metallic bombs aboard passenger aircraft bound for Western countries, ABC television reported, citing two unnamed intelligence officials.
The targeting of the defector was first reported by the McClatchy news service.
According to the reports, European intelligence sources describe the former agent — who allegedly defected from either French military intelligence services or the country’s foreign spy agency the DGSE — as the “highest ranking defector ever to go over to the terrorist group.”
The French national, who reportedly joined Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and went to Syria, was one of the targets of a round of US air raids in Syria aimed at the Al Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, McClatchy wrote. US officials at the time said the air strikes were aimed at the “Khorasan” group, describing it as a collection of Al Qaeda veterans.
The United States has launched a bombing campaign in Syria and Iraq as part of a coalition fighting militants in both countries — mainly those belonging to the radical Islamic State group that controls large swathes of territory.
France’s defence ministry denied any of its former agents was involved. “The report that the person allegedly belonged to the defence ministry’s intelligence services is completely and utterly wrong,” a ministry official said.
The DGSE, meanwhile, refused to comment, as did France’s foreign ministry.
According to the McClatchy report, the alleged former officer is an expert in explosives and is still alive despite the air strikes.
In Washington, the Central Intelligence Agency and the US military declined to comment.
Eight fighters from Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement were killed in clashes with IS militants in an area on the border with Syria, a Hezbollah source said.
The source revised an earlier toll of five dead for Sunday’s attack by jihadists on a Hezbollah post and clashes that followed.
The early morning attack targeted the post in mountains around the town of Nabi Sbat, east of Baalbek on the border with Syria.
AFP
