Kurds warn of massacre by Islamic State in Syrian town

Kurdish fighters warned on Friday they faced a massacre by Islamic State insurgents who have encircled the Syrian border town of Kobani with tanks and bombarded its outskirts with artillery fire.

Islamic State's battlefield gains in recent months have come as President Bashar al-Assad's forces have focussed on other rebel groups, and on Friday the army was reported to have advanced on the city of Aleppo further west, threatening rebel supply lines in a potentially major reversal.

US-led forces have been bombing Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq but the action has done little to stop their advance in northern Syria towards the Turkish border, piling pressure on Ankara to intervene.

And as US warplanes bomb Islamic State in Syria, Assad's military has intensified its own campaign against some of the rebel groups in the west and north of the country that Washington considers its allies.

Turkey said it would do what it could to prevent Kobani, a predominantly Kurdish town just over its southern border, from falling into Islamic State hands but stopped short of committing to any direct military intervention.

Esmat al-Sheikh, head of the Kurdish forces defending Kobani, said the distance between his fighters and the insurgents was now less than one kilometre (half a mile).

"We are in a small, besieged area. No reinforcements reached us and the borders are closed," he told Reuters by phone. "My expectation is for general killing, massacres and destruction."

Islamic State has carved out swathes of eastern Syria and western Iraq in a drive to create a cross-border caliphate between the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers and earning a reputation for extreme violence.

Two large clouds of smoke rose up to the east of Kobani and there were several loud explosions from further inside the town as shelling continued and gunfire rang out, a Reuters correspondent on the Turkish side of the border said.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 60 shells had hit the town, known as Ayn al-Arab in Arabic. There were also heavy clashes on the eastern and southeastern fronts.

Fighters from the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) tried to push the insurgents back, firing missiles lit up by bright red tracers from the town and striking Islamic State targets in a village a few kilometres to the east.

Kurds from northern Syria have fled into Turkey.

"It's a dramatic humanitarian tragedy as we have all witnessed," UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said in Geneva. "It's the largest single outflow of Syrians in a few days, 160,000 people."

Aleppo encircled

On the north edge of Aleppo, a Syrian army advance threatened to take the last main rebel supply route into the city and reverse two years of gains by Assad's foes, according to reports from residents and official media.

The army has taken control of three villages, state television said, in a campaign by Assad's forces that could encircle insurgents in the city.

Although there are smaller, more indirect routes into Aleppo, taking the road would also allow the army to besiege areas of the city which fell to insurgents in 2011, a tactic it used to retake Homs city in May.

Assad's forces are fighting a mixture of rebel groups in Syria, including Islamic State but also a mix of western-backed forces in a conflict which has killed nearly 200,000 people.

Resident Abdullah Qatmawi, 30, said he was unable to drive directly to Aleppo because of the blocked road. "When we arrived in the northern countryside (of Aleppo) we felt there was a problem on the road and when we arrived at Handarat there was fighting," he said.

In July the Syrian army began a fresh advance on Aleppo, after close to two years of stalemate, thanks to extra fighters from the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah, an ally of Assad.

This year, Washington and its allies have shifted focus in Syria from battling Assad to combating Islamic State.

Village by village, Kurdish forces in northern Iraq have regained around half the territory they gave up in August when Islamic State militants tore through their defences in the northwest, prompting the United States to launch air strikes in September, its first since 2011.

Turkey, however, insists the air strikes alone will not contain the Islamic State threat, and wants simultaneous action to be taken against Assad's government, including the creation of a no-fly zone on the Syrian side of the border.

"You know what will happen if there isn’t a no-fly zone? ISIL bases will be bombed and then the Syrian regime, Assad, who has committed all those massacres, believing that he is now legitimate, will bide his time and bomb Aleppo," Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said.

Turkey 'not at fault'

Davutoglu said Turkey would do what it could to prevent Kobani from falling to the militants but stopped short of committing to the sort of intervention Kurds have called for.

"We wouldn't want Kobani to fall. We'll do whatever we can to prevent this from happening," Davutoglu said in a discussion with journalists broadcast on the A Haber television station.

Parliament gave the government powers on Thursday to order cross-border military incursions against Islamic State, and to allow forces of the U.S.-led foreign coalition to launch similar operations from Turkish territory.

But Davutoglu appeared to pull back from any suggestion this meant Turkey was planning an incursion, saying this could drag Ankara into a wider conflict along its 900 km (560-mile) border.

Defence Minister Ismet Yilmaz was also quoted as telling reporters that it would be wrong to expect imminent military action after the parliamentary motion passed.

Ankara fears intervention could worsen security on its border by strengthening Assad and bolstering Kurdish fighters linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state.

On the Turkish border, a group of Turkish Kurds said they wanted to join the fight against IS in Kobani but were being prevented by Turkish forces.

"If we had guns, we would all go too. If the Turkish state would leave us, we would all fight alongside them," said Tevfik Kanat, 43, standing outside of Atmanek, a village of mud-brick houses where locals to watch the assault on Kobani.

"Turkey is letting Kobani fall to break the will of the Kurds and weaken the PKK to force them into a deal. They think that they can make Kurds beg," said Mehmet Guven, 45.

(Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes in Beirut, Selin Bucak in Istanbul, Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara, Isabel Coles in Hassan Sham, Iraq, and Raheem Salman and Yara Bayoumy in Baghdad, Stephanie Nebenhay in Geneva; Writing by Nick Tattersall and Oliver Holmes; Editing by David Stamp and Giles Elgood)