A Turkish soldier stands guard as Syrian Kurds cross the border fence into Turkey near the southeastern town of Suruc in Sanliurfa province, September 19, 2014. REUTERS/Stringer

By Daren Butler

SURUC Turkey (Reuters) - About 60,000 Syrian Kurds fled into Turkey in the space of 24 hours, a deputy prime minister said on Saturday, as Islamic State militants seized dozens of villages close to the border.

Turkey opened a stretch of the frontier on Friday after Kurdish civilians fled their homes, fearing an imminent attack on the border town of Ayn al-Arab, also known as Kobani. A Kurdish commander on the ground said Islamic State had advanced to within 15 km (9 miles) of the town.

Local Kurds said they feared a massacre in Kobani, whose strategic location has been blocking the radical Sunni Muslim militants from consolidating their gains across northern Syria.

The United States has said it is prepared to carry out airstrikes in Syria to stop the advances of Islamic State, which has also seized tracts of territory in neighbouring Iraq and has proclaimed a caliphate in the heart of the Middle East.

U.S. forces have bombed the group in Iraq at the request of the government, but it is unclear when or where any military action might take place in Syria, whose president, Bashar al-Assad, Washington says is no longer legitimate.

Lokman Isa, a 34-year-old farmer, said he had fled with his family and about 30 other families after heavily armed Islamic State militants entered his village of Celebi. He said the Kurdish forces battling them had only light weapons.

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Turkish soldiers stand guard as Syrian Kurds wait behind the border fence to cross into Turkey near …

"They (Islamic State) have destroyed every place they have gone to. We saw what they did in Iraq -- in Sinjar -- and we fled in fear," he told Reuters in the Turkish town of Suruc, where Turkish authorities were setting up a camp.

Sitting in a field after just crossing the border, Abdullah Shiran, a 24-year-old engineer, recounted scenes of horror in his village of Shiran, about 10 km (six miles) from Kobani.

"IS came and attacked and we left with the women but the rest of the men stayed behind ... They killed many people in the villages, cutting their throats. We were terrified that they would cut our throats too," he said.

HUDDLING IN FIELDS

Turkish soldiers looked on as the refugees, many of them women carrying bundles on their heads, streamed across. Hundreds of people huddled in the dusty fields with their few belongings.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus put the number of Syrian Kurds to have crossed the 30-km section of the border that has been open since Friday at 60,000. Officials said many thousands were still waiting to cross on Saturday evening.

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Turkish soldiers stand guard as Syrian Kurds cross the border fence into Turkey near the southeaster …

"The United States, Turkey, Russia, friendly countries must help us. They must bomb Islamic State. All they can do is cut off heads, they have nothing to do with Islam," said Mustafa Saleh, a 30-year-old water industry worker.

"I would have fought to my last drop of blood against Islamic State, but I had to bring the women and children."

Kurdish forces have evacuated at least 100 villages on the Syrian side since the militants' onslaught started on Tuesday.

"Islamic State sees Kobani like a lump in the body, they think it is in their way," said Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors Syria's civil war.

Islamic State has executed at least 11 Kurdish civilians, including boys, in the villages it has seized near Kobani, the Observatory said.

Abdulrahman said more than 300 Kurdish fighters had crossed into Syria from Turkey late on Friday to help push back Islamic State, but that it was not clear which group they belonged to.

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Turkish policemen and soldiers walk as Syrian Kurds wait behind the border fence to cross into Turke …

"Islamic State is killing any civilian it finds in a village," Mustefa Ebdi, director of a local radio station called Arta FM, told Reuters by telephone from the northern outskirts of Kobani. He said he could see thousands of people waiting to cross the border into Turkey.

"People prefer to flee rather than remain and die," he said. "(Islamic State wants) to eliminate anything that is Kurdish. This is creating a state of terror."

On his Facebook page, Ebdi said the killing of 34 civilians - women, elderly, children and the disabled - had been documented. He said the residents of 200 villages had been forced to flee.

CLOSING IN

Scrambling to coordinate aid, the mayor of Suruc, Orhan Sansal, described the situation in the area as "chaotic".

"Help is coming but there are problems with accommodation. Some people are staying with relatives, some in wedding halls, some in mosques and municipal buildings," he said.

Esmat al-Sheikh, commander of the Kurdish forces defending Kobani, told Reuters by telephone that clashes were occurring to the north and east on Saturday.

He said Islamic State fighters using rockets, artillery, tanks and armoured vehicles had advanced towards Kobani overnight and were now only 15 km away.

At least 18 Islamic State fighters were killed in clashes with Syrian Kurds overnight as the militant group took control of more villages around the town, according to the Observatory.

Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani called on Friday for international intervention to protect Kobani from the Islamic State advance, saying the insurgents must be "hit and destroyed wherever they are".

Western states have increased contact with the main Syrian Kurdish political party, the PYD, whose armed wing is the YPG, since Islamic State made a lightning advance across northern Iraq in June.

The YPG says it has 50,000 fighters and should be a natural partner in the coalition the United States is trying to build.

But such cooperation could prove difficult because of Syrian Kurds' ties to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a group listed as a terrorist organisation by many Western states due to the militant campaign it has waged for Kurdish rights in Turkey.

The PKK on Thursday called on young men in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast to join the fight against Islamic State. On Saturday Kobani's local radio station broadcast a call to arms from PKK commander Murat Karayilan in Kurdish.

(Additional reporting by Asli Kandemir in Istanbul, Sylvia Westall and Tom Perry in Beirut,; Writing by Seda Sezer and Sylvia Westall; Editing by Gareth Jones and Kevin Liffey)

60,000 flee Syria over Islamic State fears

Syrian Kurds cross the border into Turkey after heavily armed militants seize dozens of villages.
'We saw what they did in Iraq'

Sierra Leone confined its 6 million people to their homes Friday for the next three days as the Ebola-ravaged West African country began what was believed to be the most sweeping lockdown against disease since the Middle Ages.

In a desperate effort to bring the outbreak under control, thousands of health care workers began going house to house in crowded urban neighborhoods and remote villages, hoping to find and isolate infected people.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A college dropout from Florida. A nurse's aide from Denver. The owner of a pizza-and-wings joint from upstate New York.

Except for their embrace of Islam, there's no common profile for the 100-plus Americans who have traveled to Syria to join Islamic fighters or are accused of supporting them from the United States.

Their reasons for joining an extremist cause a half-world away are as varied as their geography and life stories.

Some seek adventure and camaraderie. Others feel a call to fight perceived injustice.

But a common strain of disaffection, a search for meaning, seems to emerge, at times stronger than any motivation tied to religious devotion.

"What unifies all these folks is a desire to be recognized, a desire to find a cause that they can mold their life to," says Evan Kohlmann, who tracks terrorists with Flashpoint Global Partners.

Foreign fighters from dozens of nations are pouring into the Middle East to join the Islamic State group and other terrorist organizations. U.S. officials are putting new energy into trying to understand what radicalizes people far removed from the fight, and into trying to prod countries to do a better job of keeping them from joining up.

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama will lead a meeting of the 15-member U.N. Security Council as part of the effort to stem the flow of foreign nationals. Next month, the White House will hold a conference on the radicalization of Americans.

It's an increasingly urgent matter now that the U.S. and allies are directly attacking Islamic State fighters. There are concerns of blowback that encourages more terrorism at home.

Just last week, a post on a top jihadi forum urged American Muslims who can't reach the battlefront to wage "an aggressive and sustained campaign of lone-wolf attacks" locally, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. As well, there are worries that fighters with U.S. passports will return home to carry out attacks in America or with airplanes headed to the U.S.

The transition from everyday American to foreign fighter for a group that trumpets the beheading of its enemies may start with concern that fellow Muslims are being killed abroad. It often includes Internet chatrooms and online conversations with extremists. It may involve knowing someone who's radicalized. Many cite the teachings of radical U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in 2011 but whose words are still influential in cyberspace.

Moner Mohammad Abusalha, 22, who grew up playing basketball in Vero Beach, Florida, described his journey to jihadism in a video before he killed himself and 16 others in a suicide bombing in Syria last May. He mentioned both the teachings of al-Awlaki and the influence of friend.

The college dropout, whose father was Palestinian and mother was Italian-American, said of his life as a Muslim in America: "This never was a place for me. ... I was always sad and depressed. Life sucked."

"I want to rest in the afterlife, in heaven," he said. "Heaven is better."

Shannon Conley, 19, a nurse's aide from suburban Denver, wanted to marry an Islamic extremist fighter she met online and thought she could use her U.S. military training to fight a holy war overseas. In pursuing her Muslim faith, "she was exposed to teachings through which she was terribly misled," her lawyer, Robert Pepin, wrote in a court filing. Conley pleaded guilty to trying to help Islamic militants and is awaiting sentencing.

In the most recent case, 30-year-old Mufid Elfgeeh, a pizza and food mart owner from Rochester, New York, was indicted last week for trying to help three people travel to Syria to join extremist fighters. A naturalized citizen from Yemen, Elfgeeh was arrested this year for buying guns as part of a plan to kill U.S. service members.

Elfgeeh has pleaded innocent.

While the ranks of foreign fighters from America include both naturalized citizens and the native-born, Kamran Bokhari of Stratfor global intelligence said second-generation Muslim Americans trying to balance two cultures could be particularly vulnerable.

"It's natural for the second generation to be feeling sort of lost and not knowing who they are," he said. They may feel drawn to the plight of Muslims abroad, and feel guilty about living comfortable lives, he added.

For all the concern about Americans who support Islamic militants, terrorism experts say the problem is much worse in Europe, where Muslims are not as wealthy or assimilated. Several hundred people from Britain have traveled to Syria, according to official estimates, and France and Germany have estimated a combined 1,300 of their citizens have joined the fight.

Aaron Zelin, an expert on jihadi groups at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said roughly half the Americans who have joined the Islamic State group are converts to Islam. The rest typically are born Muslim or "reverts," people who were Muslim at birth, but didn't practice the faith until later in life, he said.

"I would argue that they converted to jihadism, not necessarily mainstream Islam," he said.

Attorney General Eric Holder pointed to the indictment of Elfgeeh as evidence that U.S. officials are aggressively working to identify and disrupt those who want to join or support terrorist groups.

Critics say the administration's efforts have been largely cosmetic and that officials haven't done enough to understand root causes.

"You have to understand who is being radicalized, why they are being radicalized and how they are being radicalized, and I don't think the U.S. government really has a good handle on that," Kohlmann said.

U.S. officials point to recent success at preventing major terrorist attacks, but Kohlmann said it would be overly optimistic to think the government can closely monitor every American who joins extremist causes. While the Islamic militants' chief focus remains in Syria, he said there is plenty of rhetoric exhorting sympathizers to target Westerners.

"Take these people at their word. Because they mean it."

___

Follow Benac on Twitter at http://twitter.com/nbenac and Riechmann at http://twitter.com/debriechmann

POLLOCK PINES, Calif. (AP) — As an expanding wildfire in Northern California kept nearly 3,000 people from their homes, teams sought to find out how many structures had already been lost to the huge blaze, authorities said.

While officials confirmed that several structures have been damaged or destroyed in the King Fire, dangerous conditions have so far prevented them from determining an exact number or how many of them were homes, fire spokesman Mike McMillian said.

The fire some 60 miles east of Sacramento grew to more than 128 square miles Saturday, and gathering thunderstorms could either help or harm the firefight with moisture or wind, authorities said.

The blaze began one week ago, and a man accused of starting the blaze is being held on $10 million bail. It is just 10 percent contained.

More than 5,000 firefighters — from as far as Florida and Alaska — are helping California crews battle the blaze that has not only consumed grass and brush, but swaths of extremely dry tall timber.

"That's what makes it difficult for a direct attack," McMillian said. "The main fuel that is burning is the tall timber. We're making some progress, but it is slow going in some areas as we're trying to construct more contingency and control lines."

Raw: Wildfires in CA Burn Forest AsunderPlay video

About 100 evacuees have been allowed to return home, but some 2,700 remain under evacuation orders, Cal Fire said in a statement.

Also of concern are possible wind gusts of up to 30 mph that could push the fire, which has spread from the north to the south, state fire spokeswoman Lynne Tolmachoff said.

"That would open up a whole new area for it to burn in," Tolmachoff said.

The fire has spread to the Tahoe National Forest northwest of Lake Tahoe, McMillian said. Also, the fire is threatening a key University of California, Berkeley research station that his home to scores of experiments on trees, plants and other wildlife.

Wayne Allen Huntsman, 37, pleaded not guilty to an arson charge Friday in El Dorado County Superior Court.

Authorities have not said what evidence they have linking Huntsman to the fire, by far one of the largest of about a dozen fires burning statewide.

Meanwhile, a wildfire in the town of Weed near the Oregon border was fully contained Saturday after burning 479 acres and destroying 143 homes. Another wildfire that destroyed 37 homes near Yosemite National Park was 93 percent contained.