NEW YORK – The head of Syria’s opposition movement, Hadi al-Bahra, has urged the US to launch airstrikes on Islamic State (IS) militants in northeast Syria, where the Sunni Muslim extremists are attacking a Kurdish minority.
“We must begin airstrikes in Syria immediately, as we speak. Hundreds of thousands of civilians in northern Syria and Kobane area and Ayn al-Arabon area are trapped in a brutal siege by ISIS,” said al-Bahra, President of the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces.
“Time is of the essence to avert catastrophe. We are ready to coordinate to with our allies to maximise the impact of airstrikes against ISIS. Hitting them in Iraq alone will not work if they can continue to operate, regroup and train inside Syria.”
US President Barack Obama plans to extend airstrikes from Iraq to Syria and militarily back Kurds, Iraqis and moderate parts of the Syrian opposition to fight IS (also known as ISIS and ISIL), which has imposed caliphate-rule across Sunni-majority areas straddling the Iraq-Syria border.
An IS offensive in northeast Syria has forced tens of thousands of Kurds to flee their homes – many crossing the border into Turkey, which needs help caring for 130,000 arrivals in the past few days alone, the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR says.
Even before this influx, Turkey struggled to cope with more than a million Syrian refugees who had entered its territory since protests against President Bashar al-Assad began in 2011 and spiralled into a conflict of moderate, Islamist and government forces that has claimed 190,000 lives.
Sherif Elsayed-Ali, from the pressure group Amnesty International, warned on Monday that Turkey overwhelmed by refugees, is shutting border posts and “denying safe sanctuary to anyone who is fleeing the horrors of war”.
“With more and more desperate refugees arriving at the border in search of safety it is crucial that the international community acts now to strengthen its support to Turkey and other countries neighbouring Syria to avert further suffering,” Elsayed-Ali added.
The US has launched air strikes to prevent Baghdad and Erbil falling to IS, but has yet to strike in Syria. It is building a coalition of 40-50 nations to offer military, financial and diplomatic help. Saudi Arabia will host a camp to train 5,000 vetted Syrian fighters.
“The judgment of everybody is that a great deal can be accomplished, and perhaps even the whole deal can be accomplished, by training the Free Syrian Army in the open,” US Secretary of State John Kerry told MSNBC on Monday.
“Saudi Arabia has agreed openly to do that training in Saudi Arabia. That’s a remarkable step forward. Countries in the region – multiple – have made commitments to be part of military action. And I think we have to let the beginning begin and we’ll see as we go forward.”
On Monday, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Paris would not launch air strikes against IS in Syria despite becoming the first country to join Washington in conducting air raids on IS targets in Iraq.
