Heavy clashes erupted on Friday between Kurdish militiamen and Islamic State jihadists who have besieged a key Syrian town near the Turkish border, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported.

The United States Thursday welcomed a vote by Turkey's parliament giving a green light to take military action against the Islamic State militant group.

Iran warned neighboring Turkey Thursday against doing anything that might aggravate tensions in the region, after the parliament in Ankara voted to authorize military intervention in Syria and Iraq.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif spoke by telephone with his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu, and "criticized the method chosen to fight terrorism, expressing concern about any action that might aggravate the situation," state news agency IRNA reported.

Nearly all residents of the embattled Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane and surrounding area have fled an advance by Islamic State group jihadists, a monitor said Thursday.

"Some 80 to 90 percent of residents of Kobane and nearby villages have fled for fear of an imminent assault by the Islamic State group," said the director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdel Rahman.

The jailed leader of Turkey's outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a 30-year insurgency for self-rule, warned on Thursday the peace process could collapse if Islamic State militants seize a key Syrian border town.

IS militants have in recent days advanced close to the Syrian Kurdish town of Ain al-Arab, known as Kobane to the Kurds, a few kilometers south of the Turkish border.

Islamic State fighters were at the gates of a key Kurdish town on the Syrian border with Turkey on Thursday as its parliament prepared to vote on authorizing military intervention against the jihadists.

Kurdish militiamen backed by U.S.-led air strikes were locked in fierce fighting to prevent the besieged border town of Kobane from falling to IS group fighters.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pressed the West on Wednesday to find a longterm solution to the crises in Syria and Iraq, saying dropping "tons of bombs" on Islamic State militants would only provide temporary respite.

Erdogan has pushed for the ousting of President Bashar Assad throughout the Syria crisis to settle the conflict and said that international action had to go well beyond air strikes.

Turkish police on Wednesday detained three students at Istanbul University suspected of being sympathizers of the Islamic State (IS) group following clashes at an anti-jihadist campus protest, reports said.

Police stormed the university's faculty of humanities and science in Istanbul's Beyazit district after Islamist students armed with sticks and stones attacked another group protesting against IS.

Sitting on a hill just a few kilometers from the clashes between Islamic State insurgents and Kurdish militia, a group of Turkish Kurds have found the ideal vantage point to follow the deadly fighting in the distance.

Like spectators watching a sporting event, some munch on sunflower seeds and search for signs of which side has gained the upper hand in the battle raging across the border in Syria.

U.S.-led forces carried out at least five air strikes on Wednesday against Islamic State group fighters attacking the Syrian Kurdish town of Ain al-Arab, a monitoring group said.

The strikes hit IS positions south and southeast of the town, known as Kobane by the Kurds, which the jihadists have been battling to take for more than two weeks, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.