NATO Says it will Defend Turkey Against Any Spill Over From Syria

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will defend its member state Turkey if violence spills over from neighboring Syria, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said, Monday.    

The Secretary General's statement comes amid the Islamic State militants besieging the Syrian town of Kobani, which is very near to the Turkish border.

"The main responsibility for NATO is to protect all allied countries. Turkey is a NATO ally and our main responsibility is to protect the integrity, the borders of Turkey and that is the reason why we have deployed Patriot missiles in Turkey to enhance, to strengthen the airfence of Turkey," Stoltenberg told a news conference during a visit to Poland.

"Turkey should know that NATO will be there if there is any spillover, any attacks on Turkey as a consequence of the violence we see in Syria," he said, reports Reuters.

Stoltenberg, who took charge as the Secretary General of NATO on Oct.1, welcomed the U.S. airstrikes on the Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria. He expressed shock at the horrible atrocities committed by the militants who have taken over vast swathes of land in Iraq and Syria.

Meanwhile, fierce fighting is going on at the Syria-Turkey border town of Kobani between the Syrian Kurds and Islamic State militants.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that 27 Islamic State militants and 19 Kurds were killed on Sunday in the fighting.

Observatory director Rami Abdurrahman said Monday that a female Kurdish fighter killed 10 Islamic State militants when she blew herself up a day earlier, reports the Associated Press.

Idris Nassan, a spokesman for the Kurdish fighters said that airstrikes alone cannot defeat the Islamic State in Kobani. He said the Islamic State militants were surrounding the city from three sides and fighter jets cannot hit every militant on the ground.

Elaborating on the Islamic State tactics to evade airstrikes, Nassan said that whenever a jet approaches, the militants leave their exposed positions and hide somewhere.

He said that the Kurdish fighters need ground support and also heavy weapons and ammunition to defeat the Islamic State, reports The Guardian.