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 The government sent a proposal to parliament late on Tuesday which
would broaden existing powers and allow Ankara to order military
action to "defeat attacks directed towards our country from all
terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria".
The proposal would also mean Turkey, until now reluctant to take a
frontline role against Islamic State, could allow foreign forces to
use its territory for cross-border incursions.
The Islamic State advance to within sight of the Turkish army on the
border has piled pressure on the NATO member to play a greater role
in the U.S.-led military coalition carrying out air strikes against
the insurgents in Syria and Iraq.
The militants are encroaching on the tomb of Suleyman Shah,
grandfather of the Ottoman Empire's founder, which lies in northern
Syria but which Ankara considers sovereign territory and has made
clear it will defend.
A column of black smoke rose from the southeastern side of Kobani, a
predominantly Kurdish border town under siege by Islamic State for
more than two weeks, as jets roared overhead, a Reuters
correspondent on the Turkish side said.
 "(They) hit a village that is four to five kilometers (two to three
miles) southeast of Kobani and we heard they destroyed one (Islamic
State) tank," Parwer Mohammed Ali, a translator with the Kurdish PYD
group, told Reuters by telephone from Kobani, known as Ain al-Arab
in Arabic. The United States has been carrying out strikes in Iraq against the
militant group since July and in Syria since last week with the help
of Arab allies. Britain and France have also struck Islamic State
targets in Iraq.
Using mostly nighttime strikes, it aims to damage and destroy the
bases and forces of the al Qaeda offshoot which has captured large
areas of both countries. Turkey, which hosts a U.S. air base at its
southern town of Incirlik, has so far not been militarily involved.
Britain said on Wednesday that it had conducted air strikes
overnight on Islamic State fighters west of Baghdad, attacking an
armed pick-up truck and a transport.
FLUID FRONTLINE
The insurgents have taken control of 325 of 354 villages around
Kobani, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which
monitors the war. Kurds who have fled to Turkey have described
beheadings and the killing of children as the insurgents went from
village to village.
"They're killing us on the Turkish border, that makes us very angry.
There's no humanity from Turkey, no humanity from Europe or anywhere
else in the world," said Maslum Bergadan, who fled to Turkey and
said two of his brothers had been captured by Islamic State
fighters.
Turkey shares a 1,200 km (750-mile) border with Iraq and Syria and
is already struggling with 1.5 million refugees from the Syrian war
alone. It deployed tanks and armoured vehicles in the hills
overlooking Kobani this week as fighting intensified.
But it fears that air strikes, if not accompanied by a broader
strategy to end the fighting, could strengthen Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad and bolster Kurdish militants allied to Kurds in
Turkey who have fought for three decades for greater autonomy. Its rhetoric has hardened since 46 Turkish hostages, whose captivity
at the hands of Islamic State militants made it wary of taking
action, were released this month, but it remains hesitant.
Esmat al-Sheikh, commander of the Kurdish forces defending Kobani,
said there were five air strikes but that he did not yet know if
they were successful. "Jets are still circling overhead," he said by
telephone.
The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami
Abdulrahman, said Kurdish sources on the battlefront reported seeing
dead Islamic State fighters at the strike sites.
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"Kurdish people saw the bodies," he said.
He also reported that Islamic State had beheaded seven men and three
women near Kobani in its campaign to frighten residents resisting
the group's advance. Islamic State fighters, besieging Kobani from
three sides, are now just kilometers away from the town, with the
battle lines fluid, according to Idris Nassan, deputy foreign
minister in a local Kurdish administration.
"Sometimes YPG pushes them back, other times ISIS progresses ... the
situation is still very, very dangerous," he told Reuters by phone
from the town, forecasting a long battle.
"I don't think that ISIS can control Kobani easily".
CROSS-BORDER COOPERATION
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, terrifying communities into
submission by slaughtering those who resist.
Iraqi Kurdish troops drove Islamic State fighters from a strategic
border crossing with Syria on Tuesday and won the support of members
of a major Sunni tribe, in one of the biggest successes since U.S.
forces began bombing the Islamists.
Peshmerga fighters took control of the Rabia border crossing in a
victory which could make it harder for militants to operate on both
sides of the frontier.
"Of course there were attempts (by Islamic State) to return to
Rabia, but they were not able to," Peshmerga spokesman Halgurd
Hikmat said.
"Now they are under great pressure from the Peshmerga in Zumar,"
Hikmat said, referring to a mixed Kurdish-Arab town northwest of
Mosul near an oilfield, from where Kurdish fighters had been forced
to withdraw because of mines and a suicide bomb attack by Islamic
State. Control of Zumar provides access to the small Ain Zalah oil field
and a nearby refinery. The insurgents have used oil sales to fund
their operations.
Rabia controls the main highway linking Syria to Mosul, the biggest
city in northern Iraq, which Islamic State fighters captured in June
at the start of a lightning advance through Iraq's Sunni Muslim
north.
"We are in control of the (Rabia) district. There are small pockets
(of militants) in the surrounding villages. The only thing left is
the hospital and that will be dealt with today," a Peshmerga fighter
told Reuters by telephone.
In the Syrian government-controlled city of Homs, twin suicide bombs
killed 18 people and wounded 40, the Syrian state news agency SANA
said on Wednesday.
(Additional reporting by Alexander Dziadosz in Beirut, Isabel Coles
in Arbil, Ned Parker and Yara Bayoumy in Baghdad, Costas Pitas in
London; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Giles Elgood)
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