Turkey to offer bases for US to train moderate Syrian rebels

ANKARA — United States National Security Adviser Susan Rice yesterday said Turkey had agreed to let the US military train Syrian rebels on its soil to fight Islamic State militants pushing deeper into Kobani amid a round of air strikes seeking to prevent them from encircling the besieged Syrian town.

Also yesterday, Britain announced it had deployed a team of army trainers to Iraq to help Kurdish peshmerga fighters against the militants.

The Turkish agreement, which Ms Rice announced on NBC, is a significant expansion of Turkish cooperation in the fight against the Islamic State, which has declared a Caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq and is gaining territory along the Turkish border.

While Turkey had previously pledged to join the campaign, it had not said what it would be willing to contribute militarily.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member has ruled out sending ground troops into Syria unless the US led a broader campaign to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad.

However, Turkey is now willing to join Saudi Arabia in offering territory to be used to train moderate Syrian rebels who could fight the militants on the ground in Syria, Ms Rice said yesterday.

She also said Turkish bases could be used by coalition forces giving US aircraft close access to targets in neighbouring Syria. The US has an air base near Incirlik, Turkey.

Meanwhile, Britain’s Ministry of Defence yesterday said it was sending army trainers to Iraq to help Kurdish fighters maintain and use heavy machine guns against the militants.

The team, which local media reports said was 12-strong, had been deployed to Erbil for around a week to help Kurdish fighters operate the guns which Britain gifted to them last month.

“We are continuing to scope assistance to the Iraqi security forces, further training teams addressing soldiering skills, medical and counter-explosive device knowledge will follow,” the ministry said in a statement.

A spokeswoman stressed the army trainers were fulfilling a non-combat role. Although Britain’s Parliament has sanctioned the Royal Air Force taking part in air strikes on Islamic State militants inside Iraq, Prime Minister David Cameron has repeatedly said there was no question for now of deploying ground forces.

Six US air strikes near Kobani in the past two days struck an Islamic State fighting position and damaged buildings and trucks, a news release from the US Central Command said.

In addition to the bombings in Syria, the US conducted three air strikes against the Islamic State in Iraq, striking a unit and a truck, it added.

In Iraq, suspected Islamic State bombers yesterday assassinated a provincial police chief and killed 28 people in an attack on a Kurdish security headquarters yesterday — the second straight day of mass attacks that killed scores.

The two attacks, in the north of the country and the west, showed the jihadist group’s ability to inflict damage on both the forces of the autonomous Kurdish region and the central government, despite US-led air strikes.

The jihadists now control almost half of the town on the frontier with Turkey, including an area housing administrative and security buildings, the United Kingdom-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement, citing a witness.

From the Turkish border, Islamic State fighters could be seen moving towards the north-east of Kobani, seeking to complete its encirclement.

“We are hearing from officials in Kobani that reinforcements for the Islamic State were on their way,” Mr Faysal Sariyildiz, a Kurdish lawmaker in the Turkish Parliament, said. “The US should stop those reinforcements in the plains before they could reach Kobani.”

Kobani has been besieged for more than three weeks, and the United Nations says more than 170,000 people have been forced to flee their homes.