TURKEY’S GOVERNMENT GETS NEW POWERS TO FIGHT ISLAMIC STATE IN SYRIA, IRAQ
Turkey’s parliament gave the government new powers Thursday to launch military incursions into Syria and Iraq, and to allow foreign forces to use its territory for possible operations against Islamic State. The move opens the way for Turkey to play a more robust role in the U.S.-led coalition against the Sunni militants. The vote came as the extremists pressed their offensive against a beleaguered Kurdish town along Syria’s border with Turkey. The assault, which has forced some 160,000 Syrians to flee across the frontier in recent days, left the Kurdish militiamen scrambling to repel the militants’ advance into the outskirts of Kobani, also known as Ayn Arab.
In other key developments:
• U.S.-ledcoalition aircraft carried out four airstrikes against Islamic State targets inside Syria, including one that destroyed a militant checkpoint near Kobani, the U.S. Central Command said. Others struck targets north of Sinjar Mountain, west of Raqqah and east of Aleppo, it said. • Islamic State militants launched an assault on the western Iraqi town of Hit, military spokesman Qassim al-Moussawi said. The attack started at dawn when the militants, using at least three suicide bombers, struck checkpoints at the town’s entrances, causing casualties among the security forces, al-Moussawi said. The battle over Hit came as Iraqi Kurdish security forces, known as peshmerga, dislodged the militants from the northwestern Iraqi towns of Rabia, Zumar and Mahmoudiyah, with the assistance of airstrikes by the U.S.led coalition. • The U.S. Navy said a Marine who ejected from a plane over the Persian Gulf on Wednesday was “presumed lost at sea,” marking the first reported U.S. fatality from the operation against Islamic State.