A Syrian Kurdish woman, fleeing from Islamic State militants, carries a child and her belongings after crossing into Turkey near the southeastern town of Suruc in Sanliurfa province, yesterday. Photo: Reuters

Syrian Kurds battled to defend a key border town from an Islamic State advance yesterday as Kurdish youths from neighbouring Turkey rushed to their aid, heightening the pressure on Ankara to act against the Islamist insurgents.

In Turkey, which is struggling to manage an influx of more than 130,000 Syrian Kurdish refugees since Friday, security forces fired tear gas and water cannon at hundreds of Kurdish protesters who accuse Ankara of favouring Islamic State against the Kurds.

The main Kurdish armed group in northern Syria, the YPG, said its fighters had halted the Islamic State advance east of the predominantly Kurdish town of Kobani, also known as Ayn al-Arab, but that fierce fighting was continuing.

Hundreds of Kurdish youths gathered on the Turkish side of the border, responding to calls from Kurdish leaders to join the fight against Islamic State fighters who have seized swathes of Iraq and Syria and proclaimed a caliphate.

Residents fleeing Kobani said the militants were executing people of all ages in villages they seized. Kurds are mostly Sunni Muslims but Islamic State views them as apostates because of their secular ideology. It has persecuted and killed Shi’ite Muslims, Christians and members of the ancient Yazidi sect as well as moderate Sunnis who reject its stark version of Islam.

The Islamic State militants are executing people of all ages in villages they have seized

Turkish security forces are now trying to keep Kurds from crossing the frontier to aid their brethren. At the Mursitpinar border crossing, a line of paramilitary police stood guard along a barbed-wire border fence.

“We all want to cross the border. We tried yesterday but they attacked us, and we will try again today,” said balaclava-clad Kurdish activist Shirwan, 28, holding a large PKK flag.

Ismet, 19, a local man who makes a living collecting strawberries, said the protesters had gathered from cities across Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast: “They are not from around here. They come from Sirnak, Van, Mardin, Nusaybin.”

He said several hundred Turkish Kurds had already crossed to join the fight. Other residents put the figure higher.

The advances by the Sunni insurgents just across Turkey’s southern border have alarmed Ankara. But so far Turkey has been slow to join calls for a coalition to fight Islamic State, worried in part about links between the Syrian Kurds and Turkey’s own Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which waged an armed campaign for Kurdish rights over several decades.

Turkey strongly denies it has given any form of support to the Islamist militants, but Western countries say its open borders during Syria’s three year civil war allowed Islamic State and other radical groups to grow in power.

The PKK called Turkey’s Kurds to arms on Sunday, saying “supporting this heroic resistance” in Kobani was a “debt of honour”. Radio stations played patriotic Kurdish songs about heroic fighters and martyrs and one played recordings of PKK commander Murat Karayilan in a bid to drum up support.

Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said more than 130,000 Syrian Kurds had fled to Turkey since Friday.

Fierce clashes continued yesterday but the Islamic State advance to the east of Kobani, scene of the fiercest fighting since the insurgents launched their offensive last Tuesday, had been halted, Redur Xelil, spokesman for the YPG, said via Skype.

He said hundreds of Turkish Kurds were already helping in the struggle to push back the insurgents.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks violence in the Syrian war, said Islamic State fighters had made no significant advance in the last 24 hours.

The United States has carried out air strikes against Islamic State fighters in Iraq and says it is prepared to extend them into Syria, but has not said when or where strikes would begin.

Turkey, a Nato member with a big US air base in the southern town of Incirlik, has so far made clear it does not want to take a frontline military role. Initially, officials said they were wary of fighting Islamic State because the group was holding 46 Turkish hostages.

Those hostages – including Turkey’s consul general in the Iraqi city of Mosul, soldiers and children – were freed on Saturday, but Turkish officials said the central government’s policy toward Islamic State was unlikely to change.