War against ISIS widens! Turkish and Syrian Kurds band together to fight terrorist group

Kurdish fighters in Turkey have issued a call to arms to defend a border town in northern Syria from advancing forces from the Islamic State, while Turkish authorities and the United Nations prepare for a surge in refugees from the fighting.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Roughly 70,000 Kurds from Syria have fled to Turkey since September 19, when militants from the Islamic State seized dozens of villages close to the border and advanced on the border town of Ayn al-Arab, known to the Kurds as Kobani.

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The U.N.'s refugee agency's representative in Turkey, Carol Batchelor, said that the real figure may actually be closer to 100,000 as Turkey faces one of the biggest surges of refugees from Syria since the war began in 2011.

"I don't think in the last three and a half years we have seen 100,000 cross in two days. So this is a bit of a measure of how this situation is unfolding and the very deep fear people have about the circumstances inside Syria, and for that matter Iraq."

A Kurdish politician from Turkey who visited Kobani said that locals had told him that Islamic State fighters were beheading people as they went through the region.

"Rather than a war this is a genocide operation ... They are going into the villages and cutting the heads of one or two people and showing them to the villagers," said Ibrahim Binici, a deputy for Turkey's pro-Kurdish HDP.

"It is truly a shameful situation for humanity," he said.

Binici is among those calling for an international response to the genocide. Five of his fellow Mps are planning a hunger strike outside U.N. offices in Geneva to press for action.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group charged with monitoring Syria's ongoing civil war, reported that at least 39 Islamic State fighters have been killed, and at least 27 Kurdish fighters have died.

The Islamic State has seized 64 villages around Kobani, and the terrorist state has executed at least 11 civilians the Observatory said.

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