The United Nations refugee agency said yesterday it was making contingency plans in case all 400,000 inhabitants of the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani fled into Turkey to escape advancing Islamic State militants. Some 138,000 Syrian Kurdish refugees have entered southern Turkey in an exodus that began last week, and two border crossing points remain open, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said.
“We are preparing for the potential of the whole population fleeing into Turkey. Anything could happen and that population of Kobani is 400,000,” UNHCR chief spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told a news briefing in Geneva.
“We don’t know if all of those people will flee, but we are preparing for that contingency,” she said. The United States and Arab allies bombed Syria for the first time on Tuesday, killing dozens of Islamic State fighters and members of a separate al Qaeda-linked group, pursuing a campaign against militants into a war at the heart of the Middle East.
