If Kobani falls to Islamic militant fighters, thousands of innocent people's lives could be taken, according to a United Nations envoy, The Associated Press reported.
As militants continued fighting in the Syrian Kurdish town on Friday, the U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura said Kobani could suffer the same fate as the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, where 8,000 Muslims were murdered while U.N. peacekeepers failed to protect them, the AP reported.
"If this falls, the 700, plus perhaps the 12,000 people, apart from the fighters, will be most likely massacred," de Mistura said, according to the AP.
The U.N. believes 700 civilians, most of which are elderly, are trapped in the town itself and 12,000 have left the center but not made it across the border into Turkey, the AP reported.
"You remember Srebrenica? We do. We never forgot. And probably we never forgave ourselves for that," de Mistura said, referring to the 1995 slaughter of thousands of Muslims by Bosnian Serb forces, according to the AP.
Turkish Kurds have risen up since Tuesday against President Tayyip Erdogan's government, which they accuse of allowing their families to be slaughtered, according to the AP.
Thirty-three people have been killed in three days of riots across the mainly Kurdish area of Turkey, the AP reported.
Two police officers have been shot dead in an apparent attempt to assassinate a police chief, but the police chief was only wounded, according to the AP.
So far, U.S.-led airstrikes against the militants have not pushed them out of Kobani, and according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the new Islamic States advances have left them in control of 40 percent of the town, the AP reported.
