The Worst Place in the World

(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Another 23,000 Syrians have escaped into Turkey, and the scene on the border is chaos:

Syrian Kurdish-led forces said they had captured a town at the Turkish border from Islamic State on Monday, driving it away from the frontier in an advance backed by US-led air strikes.

“Most of the new arrivals are Syrians escaping fighting between rival military forces in and around the key border town of Tel Abyad, which was controlled by militants and faces Akcakale across the border,” UNHCR spokesman William Spindler told a Geneva briefing.

Some 70 percent are women and children, he said.

“UNHCR field staff say most refugees are exhausted and arrive carrying just a few belongings. Some have walked for days.”

It’s nice — and not uncommon — to see the Kurds holding their own. But Kurd fighters will mostly stick to their own region, and can’t be counted on to drive ISIS out of the non-Kurd areas of Syria or Iraq.

An estimated 1.7 million Syrians have fled to Turkey.