U.S.-led air strikes intensify as Syria conflict destabilises Turkey

MURSITPINAR Turkey/ISTANBUL (Reuters) - American-led forces sharply intensified air strikes against Islamic State fighters threatening Kurds on Syria's Turkish border on Monday and Tuesday after the jihadists' advance began to destabilise Turkey.

The coalition had conducted 21 attacks on the militants near the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani over the past two days and appeared to have slowed Islamic State advances there, the U.S. military said, but cautioned that the situation remained fluid.

War on the militants in Syria is threatening to unravel a delicate peace in neighbouring Turkey where Kurds are furious with Ankara over its refusal to help protect their kin in Syria.

The plight of the Syrian Kurds in Kobani provoked riots among Turkey's 15 million Kurds last week in which at least 35 people were killed.

Turkish warplanes were reported to have attacked Kurdish rebel targets in southeast Turkey after the army said it had been attacked by the banned PKK Kurdish militant group, risking reigniting a three-decade conflict that killed 40,000 people before a cease-fire was declared two years ago.

Kurds inside Kobani said the U.S.-led strikes on Islamic State had helped, but that the militants, who have besieged the town for weeks, were still on the attack.

"Today there were air strikes throughout the day, which is a first. And sometimes we saw one plane carrying out two strikes, dropping two bombs at a time," said Abdulrahman Gok, a journalist with a local Kurdish paper who is inside the town.

"The strikes are still continuing," he said by telephone, as an explosion sounded in the background.

"In the afternoon, Islamic State intensified its shelling of the town," he said. "The fact that they're not conducting face-to-face, close distance fight but instead shelling the town from afar is evidence that they have been pushed back a bit."

Asya Abdullah, co-chair of the dominant Kurdish political party in Syria, PYD, said the latest air strikes had been "extremely helpful". "They are hitting Islamic State targets hard and because of those strikes we were able to push back a little. They are still shelling the city centre."

The White House said the impact of the air strikes on Kobani was constrained by the absence of forces on the ground.

CEASEFIRE THREATENED

The Turkish Kurds' anger and resulting unrest is a new source of turmoil in a region consumed by Iraqi and Syrian civil wars and an international campaign against Islamic State fighters.

The PKK accused Ankara of violating the cease-fire with the air strikes, on the eve of a deadline set by its jailed leader to salvage the peace process.

"For the first time in nearly two years, an air operation was carried out against our forces by the occupying Turkish Republic army," the PKK said. "These attacks against two guerrilla bases at Daglica violated the ceasefire," the PKK said, referring to an area near the border with Iraq.

U.S. President Barack Obama, who ordered the bombing campaign against Islamic State fighters that started in August, was to discuss the strategy on Tuesday with military leaders from 20 countries, including Turkey, Arab states and Western allies.

Washington has faced the difficult task of building a coalition to intervene in Syria and Iraq, two countries with complex multi-sided civil wars in which most of the nations of the Middle East have enemies and clients on the ground.

In particular, U.S. officials have expressed frustration at Turkey's refusal to help them fight against Islamic State. Washington has said Turkey has agreed to let it strike from Turkish air base; Ankara says this is still under discussion.

NATO-member Turkey has refused to join the coalition unless it also confronts Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a demand that Washington, which flies its air missions over Syria without objection from Assad, has so far rejected.

The fate of Kobani, where the United Nations says thousands could be massacred, could wreck efforts by the Turkish government to end the insurgency by PKK militants, a conflict that largely ended with the start of a peace process in 2012.

The peace process with the Kurds is one of the main initiatives of President Tayyip Erdogan's decade in power, during which Turkey has enjoyed an economic boom underpinned by investor confidence in future stability.

The unrest shows the difficulty Turkey has had in designing a Syria policy. Turkey has already taken in 1.2 million refugees from Syria's three-year civil war, including 200,000 Kurds who fled the area around Kobani in recent weeks.

"PROVOCATIONS COULD BRING MASSACRE"

Jailed PKK co-founder Abdullah Ocalan has said peace talks between his group and the Turkish state could come to an end by Wednesday. After visiting him in jail last week, Ocalan's brother Mehmet quoted him as saying: "We will wait until October 15 ... After that there will be nothing we can do."

A pro-Kurdish party leader read out a statement from Ocalan in parliament on Tuesday in which the PKK leader said Kurdish parties should work with the government to end street violence.

"Otherwise we will open the way to provocations that could bring about a massacre," Ocalan said in the statement, which the party said he wrote last week.

Turkish attacks on Kurdish positions were once a regular occurrence in southeast Turkey but had not taken place for two years. The PKK said the strikes took place on Monday, although some Turkish news reports said they happened on Sunday. There was no immediate explanation of the discrepancy.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the Turkish military had retaliated against a PKK attack in the border area. "Yesterday there was very serious harassing fire around the Daglica military outpost. Naturally it is impossible for us to tolerate this. Hence the Turkish armed forces took the necessary measures," he told a news conference, without referring specifically to air strikes.

Hurriyet newspaper said the air strikes caused "major damage" to the PKK. "F-16 and F-4 warplanes which took off from (bases in the southeastern provinces of) Diyarbakir and Malatya rained down bombs on PKK targets after they attacked a military outpost in the Daglica region," Hurriyet said.

The general staff said in a statement it had "opened fired immediately in retaliation in the strongest terms" after PKK attacks in the area, but did not mention air strikes.

"TOO LATE FOR US"

The battle for Kobani has ground on for nearly a month, although on Monday Kurdish fighters managed to replace an Islamic State flag in the West of the town with one of their own. The fighters, known as Popular Protection Units (YPG) want Turkey to allow them to bring arms across the border.

In the Turkish town of Suruc, 10 km (6 miles) from the Syrian frontier, a funeral for four female YPG fighters was being held. Hundreds at the cemetery chanted "Murderer Erdogan" in Turkish and also "long live YPG" in Kurdish.

Sehahmed, 42, at the cemetery to visit the grave of his son who was a YPG fighter and died only a few days ago, said if Turkey had intervened in Kobani, the town would have been saved.

"For days now they are just watching our people get killed. Obama is too late too. (Islamic State) is now inside the city, they're on the streets. The air strikes won't work, it will only delay the inevitable. Its too late for us. Our poor people, we face one disaster after another." 

At least six air strikes, gunfire and shelling could be heard from Mursitpinar on the Turkish side of the border on Tuesday, where Kurds, many with relatives fighting in Kobani, have maintained a vigil, watching the fighting from hillsides.

Kurds in neighbouring Iraq, who are also fighting hard against Islamic State, said they had sent ammunition to help their Syrian brethren in Kobani. Syrian Kurds said the shipment could not get to Kobani without Turkey opening a supply route.

In Iraq, Kurdish forces and government troops have rolled back some Islamic State gains in the north of the country in recent weeks, but the fighters have advanced in the west, seizing territory in the Euphrates valley within striking distance of the capital Baghdad.

Members of Iraq's Shi'ite minority have been targeted by recent bomb attacks in Baghdad, some claimed by Islamic State. On Tuesday, 25 people were killed including a Shi'ite Muslim member of Iraq's parliament in a car bomb attack at a checkpoint entrance to the Shi'ite neighbourhood of Kadhimiya in Baghdad.

The United States used helicopter gunships against the militants last week for the first time to prevent what Washington described as a threat to Baghdad's airport.

The White House says it will not send U.S. forces back into ground combat in Iraq, where Obama withdrew all troops in 2011 after an eight-year occupation. U.S. commanders have spoken of increasing U.S. advice and support for Iraqi ground forces.

(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason and Phil Stewart in Washington; Writing by Peter Graff, Oliver Holmes and Philippa Fletcher; editing by David Stamp)