Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

Turkey opened a stretch of the frontier on Friday after Kurdish civilians fled their homes, fearing an imminent attack on the border town of Ayn al-Arab. Islamic State is now within 15 km (9 miles) of the town, also known as Kobani, according to a Kurdish commander on the ground.

Islamic State's advances in northern Syria have prompted calls for help by the region's Kurds who fear a massacre in Kobani. The town sits in a strategic position on the border and has prevented the radical Sunni Muslim militants from consolidating their gains across northern Syria.

"Clashes started in the morning and we fled by car. We were 30 families in total," said Lokman Isa, 34, a farmer who had crossed into Turkey.

He said Islamic State fighters entered his village, Celebi, with heavy weapons, while the Kurdish forces battling them only had light arms.

"They have destroyed every place they have gone to. We saw what they did in Iraq in Sinjar and we fled in fear," he told Reuters in the Turkish town of Suruc, where Turkish authorities were setting up a camp.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus told CNN Turk television on Saturday that 45,000 Syrian Kurds had crossed a 30-km section of the border since Turkey opened it on Friday.

"The United States, Turkey, Russia, friendly countries must help us. They must bomb Islamic State. All they can do is cut off heads, they have nothing to do with Islam," said Mustafa Saleh, a 30 year-old water industry worker in Suruc at the site of a boarding school where tents were being set up for refugees.