200,000 flee in biggest displacement of Syrian conflict, monitor says

Istanbul , As many as 200,000 people have fled the area surrounding the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobani, also known as Ayn al-Arab, in just four days as ISIS advanced into the area, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says. It’s the biggest single displacement since the Syrian conflict began in 2011, the London-based monitoring group says. Most have gone to Turkey. Turkey’s semi-official Anadolu News Agency said 130,000 Syrian refugees have entered Turkey since Friday. The United Nations said Sunday that more than 100,000 had entered in Turkey in just two days.
The flood of refugees who have recently arrived in Turkey, fleeing ISIS offensives in Syria, increased to 130,000 on Monday, the United Nations refugee agency said.
But the unprecedented surge that broke loose Friday has slowed, as Turkey has reduced the number of open crossings from eight or nine to just two, said Ariane Rummery, a spokeswoman for the agency.
Processing the refugees is also taking time.
New arrivals are being searched for arms, receiving medical checks, being identified and receiving ID cards that they can use in Turkey to show their status to local authorities.
“Children are being vaccinated,” Rummery said.
The previous onslaught of refugees surprised aid workers experienced in the conflict.
“I don’t think in the last three and a half years we have seen 100,000 people cross in two days,” Carol Batchelor, a representative of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Turkey, said Sunday.
Fight to prevent massacre
On the Syrian side of the border, a Kurdish regional official complained that the border has become more difficult to cross.

“Now, they stop people and make a procedure before letting them in,” said Idris Nassan in the town of Kobani, which is called Ayn al-Arab in Arabic.
The town is fighting ISIS with determination day and night. “Every moment of every second of every day we have clashes ongoing outside the center of Kobani,” Nassan said.
But ISIS has bigger, better weapons than the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, known as YPG, the initials for their name in Kurdish.
“ISIS brought weapons from Iraq and Raqqa. They have tanks, RPGs, cannons,” Nassan said.