Turkey will do whatever it can to prevent the predominantly Kurdish town of Kobane, near its border with Syria, from falling to ISIL insurgents, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said late Thursday.

Just hours before Davutoglu's comment, parliament gave the government powers to order cross-border military incursions against the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant terrorists and to allow foreign coalition forces to launch similar operations from Turkish territory.

ISIL have now advanced to a few kilometers from Kobane, known as Ain al-Arab in Arabic, which lies just across the Turkish border. Turkey is already hosting over 160,000 refugees from the besieged region.
  
"We do not want Kobani to fall. We opened our arms to our brothers from Kobani," Davutoglu said in an interview with A Haber-ATV television late Thursday. "We will do whatever we can so that Kobani does not fall" to ISIL terrorists, he added, without giving specific details on the measures Turkey might take.
  
Turkish officials have cautioned against expecting rapid military steps following parliament's approval and it remains uncertain if Turkish armed forces will be used against the militants.