Syrian refugees in Turkey reach 1,50,000

Surus (Turkey): Refugees streaming into Turkey from Syria say their home city, once bustling with 4,00,000 citizens, has become a ghost town, emptied of all people but a few thousand fighters trying to hold off an onslaught by Islamic militants.

The masses fleeing the brutal offensive by the Islamic State group on the city of Kobani, looming just across the border from Turkey, are part of a wave that has reached 1,50,000 people since Thursday. Turkey had taken in well over a million Syrian refugees from the 3½-year-old conflict already

before the latest wave, but this influx is the largest yet, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.

Arriving weary in Turkey yesterday some walking, some limping, some on stretchers the refugees brought with them stories explaining why so few remain behind in the besieged city.

Osman Nawaf, 59, said that he saw about fifty dead bodies hanging headless in a village called Boras that he passed on his three-day walk from a village on the outskirts of Kobani.

Leyla Kuno, a 55-year-old mother of 10 children, said only the fighters remain in the city.

"I came today only because there is no one inside our city," she said.

Kurdish forces trying to fend off the Islamic State on Tuesday expressed hopes that the airstrikes carried out by the United States and five Arab countries against the militants might provide yet provide relief.

Nawaf Khalil, a spokesman for Syria's Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, said airstrikes targeting the Islamic militants would "help" his party's armed wing in Syria. But fighters staring out at the militants in Kobani said they have seen no let-up so far.

The US and five Arab nations attacked the Islamic State group's headquarters in eastern Syria in nighttime raids using land- and sea-based US aircraft as well as Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from two Navy ships in the Red Sea and the northern Persian Gulf.

But the bombs did not fall on Islamic State group positions near Kobani. One Kurdish fighter protecting the city, reached by phone near the front line, said that the airstrikes had yet to diminish his enemies' attack, but said

that he hoped that it would eventually hinder resupply of heavy weaponry.

It was not immediately clear why the US and allies did not hit the forces besieging Kobani, given the magnitude and urgency of the humanitarian disaster the militants are causing.

Late yesterday, the European Union said it would increase its aid to refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria by 215 million euros ( $280 million). Among other things, the funding would go toward helping those seeking refuge in Turkey over the past few days, it said.