The Turkish government on Wednesday presented a bill granting greater powers to the security forces after dozens of people died in a wave of Kurdish-led protests, with the opposition accusing the authorities of creating a "police state."

The "homeland security reform" bill was submitted to parliament's justice commission by the ruling Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), a parliamentary source told Agence France-Presse.

President Barack Obama attempted to rally allied commanders around his emerging strategy to defeat Islamic State jihadists on Tuesday, as the U.S.-led air armada stepped up its raids in Syria.

Coalition jets carried out two dozen strikes to relieve pressure on Kobane, but Obama admitted to deep concern about the Syrian border town's fate and he warned of a long campaign ahead. 

Scores of Kurds from the besieged Syrian town of Kobane are still on hunger strike after being detained by Turkey in a border town when they fled the advance of jihadists, an MP said on Wednesday.

The 160 Syrian Kurds, members of the main Syrian Kurdish party the Democratic Union Party (PYD), have been held for the last nine days in a sports hall in the Turkish town of Suruc.

Turkey on Tuesday accused the main Kurdish political party in Syria of "torturing" Syrian Kurds who fled to Turkey when Islamic State jihadists launched their assault on the border town of Kobane.

Turkey has so far taken in some 200,000 refugees from Kobane just a few kilometers (miles) from the border with Syria where Kurdish fighters have been battling the jihadists to defend the town.

Few people had ever heard of Kobane before recent weeks, but the once-sleepy Syrian border town has become a crucial symbolic battleground in the fight against Islamic State jihadists.

Desperate to preserve their hopes of autonomy in the face of the jihadists' expanding "caliphate", Kobane's rag-tag Kurdish defenders have been fighting for nearly a month to save the town.

France's president Tuesday urged Turkey to open its border to allow reinforcements to reach the besieged city of Kobane and called for more help to those fighting the advance of the Islamic State group.

Francois Hollande stressed that "all countries concerned", including those not in the coalition fighting the Islamic State group, should provide weapons to those battling the jihadists.

Just five kilometers (three miles) separates Dursun Nahsen from her son Resad. But this short distance is the difference between her refuge in the relative peace of Turkey and the deadly battle for the town of Kobane.

And it is this wrenching separation, which begins at the barbed wire of the Turkish-Syrian border, that Dursun Nahsen is finding increasingly hard to bear.

Turkish jets have bombed Kurdish rebel targets in the southeast of the country in the first such strikes against the separatists since an increasingly fragile 2013 ceasefire, officials said Tuesday.

Air Force jets struck positions of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) late Monday in the village of Daglica, located near the border with Iraq, a security source told Agence France-Presse on condition of anonymity.

The family of British photojournalist John Cantlie on Monday urged his Islamic State jihadist captors to make contact with them.

In a statement, the hostage's sister Jessica Cantlie urged IS to "restart" dialogue, saying previous communications had broken down and new efforts to speak to the jihadists were ignored.

Syria's main opposition bloc failed to agree on a prime minister during a weekend summit in Turkey, participants said, the latest setback for a coalition long beset by internal divisions.

A member of the National Coalition who declined to be named said the biggest dispute at the Istanbul meeting centered around a split between the favored candidates of vital funders Saudi Arabia and Qatar.