Mark Lowen, BBC News, southern Turkey 
 
 Turkey was already struggling to cope with over a million Syrian refugees - that was before 130,000 more fled across the border at the weekend. 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 offensive is Islamic State's second attempt to take Kobani since June, when it staged a lightning advance across northern Iraq, seizing the city of Mosul and with it Iraqi weaponry including American-made hardware that the Syrian Kurds say is now being used against them. The United States has launched air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and has said it will not hesitate to strike the group in Syria, but wants allies to join its campaign. "Fierce clashes are still under way but the ISIS (Islamic State) advance to the east of Kobani has been halted since last night," Redur Xelil, spokesman for the main Kurdish armed group, the YPG, said via Skype.
– Up until the middle of last week, Turkey put the number of Syrian refugees within its borders at more than a million. That number has swelled by 130,000 in the last four days, according to Turkey's deputy PM. It's not just the sheer number of refugees that's noteworthy: They're mainly Kurds, and as the BBC reports, many are "deeply hostile" to Turkey. And since Thursday, they've been pouring into the country in an attempt to flee ISIS militants who have, as the AP puts it, "pushed the conflict nearly within eyeshot of the Turkish border." The current conflict centers around the town of Kobani, which ISIS attempted to take in July, reports Reuters. That attempt was quelled with the help of Kurds who entered Syria from Turkey, and there were skirmishes on the Turkish side of the border yesterday as the country tried to prevent Kurds from flowing into Syria once again. As BBC correspondent Mark Lowen explains, there's a fear that the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which for decades battled for autonomy for Kurds inside Turkey, could team up with a beefed-up Syrian Kurdish militia and once again take up arms within Turkey. For now, the Syrian Kurdish fighters are said to have halted an ISIS advance on Kobani from the east, according to a rep for the Kurdish group, who says that's the front where the most intense fighting is taking place.