YUMURTALIK: The US-led coalition launched strikes against Islamic State militants besieging a Kurdish town in Syria as world leaders prepared for talks on Wednesday at the UN on battling the jihadists.

The overnight raids targeted Islamic State (IS) group fighters whose fierce assault in the area prompted more than 130,000 civilians to flee across the border into Turkey.

They followed the first strikes by Washington and its Arab allies on Tuesday against IS in other parts of Syria in which at least 120 IS and Al Qaeda militants were said to have been killed.

Washington said those raids had partly targeted extremists plotting an “imminent attack” against the West.

The US-led campaign — in which Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Jordan participated — was set to take centre stage at the United Nations later Wednesday.

US President Barack Obama, who hailed the strikes as a sign the world is united in confronting the jihadists, will be among the first leaders to address the General Assembly in New York.

He then chairs a special UN Security Council meeting due to adopt a resolution on stemming the flow of foreign fighters to Iraq and Syria, only the second time the US president leads a session of the top world body.

The US-drafted resolution calls on all countries to “prevent and suppress “recruitment and all forms of assistance to foreign fighters, and would make it illegal to collect funds or help organise their travel.

About 12,000 foreign fighters have travelled to Syria and Iraq from 74 countries, in the biggest such mobilisation since the Afghan war of the 1980s, according to the London-based International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation.

The overwhelming majority of foreign fighters — up to 75 per cent — are from the Middle East and Arab countries, with Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Morocco topping the list.

Branded a terrorist organisation by the United States and the United Nations, IS controls large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria, and has beheaded two US journalists and a British aid worker.

The raids on Tuesday were also believed to have killed a group of Al Qaeda “veterans” — known as Khorasan — plotting to attack US and Western interests, the Pentagon said.

Published in Dawn, September 25th, 2014