GENEVA: Thousands of people “will most likely be massacred” if Kobani falls to Islamic State fighters, a UN envoy said on Friday, as militants fought deeper into the besieged Syrian Kurdish town in full view of Turkish tanks that have done nothing to intervene.

United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura holds a map of Kobani as he addresses his first news conference at the United Nations European headquarters in Geneva, on Friday. (Reuters)

UN envoy Staffan de Mistura said Kobani could suffer the same fate as the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, where 8,000 Muslims were murdered by Serbs in 1995, Europe’s worst atrocity since World War Two, while UN peacekeepers failed to protect them.

“If this falls, the 700, plus perhaps the 12,000 people, apart from the fighters, will be most likely massacred,” de Mistura said.

The UN believes 700 mainly elderly civilians are trapped in the town itself and 12,000 have left the center but not made it across the border into Turkey.

“Do you remember Srebrenica? We do. We never forgot and probably we never forgave ourselves,” said de Mistura, the UN peace envoy for Syria. “When there is an imminent threat to civilians, we cannot, we should not, be silent.”

Intense fighting between Islamic State fighters and outgunned Kurdish forces in the streets of Kobani could be heard from across the border. Warplanes roared overhead and the western edge of town was hit by an air strike, apparently by US-led coalition jets.

But even as Washington has increased its bombing of Islamic State targets in the area, it has acknowledged that its air support is unlikely to be enough to save the city from falling.

“Our focus in Syria is in degrading the capacity of (Islamic State) at its core to project power, to command itself, to sustain itself, to resource itself,” US Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken said. “The tragic reality is that in the course of doing that there are going to be places like Kobani where we may or may not be able to be effective.”

Meanwhile, terrorism experts have warned that militants from the Islamic State could turn themselves into Ebola “suicide bombers” against the Western world.

IS or other terrorist groups could simply dispatch individuals to Ebola-infected areas in West Africa where they would intentionally infect themselves and then spread the virus through the world’s air transportation network.
Capt. Al Shimkus, a professor of national security affairs at the US Naval War College, said the scenario was plausible. “The individual exposed to the Ebola virus would be the carrier,” Shimkus told Forbes.

Prof. Anthony Glees, director at Buckingham University’s Center for Security and Intelligence Studies, also warned that terrorists may consider such a plan.

“In some ways it’s a plausible theory – IS fighters believe in suicide and this is a potential job for a suicide mission. They are sufficiently murderous and well-informed to consider it, and they know that we’ve been remiss in the UK,” Glees told Forbes.

SOURCE: ARABNEWS.COM