President Barack Obama conferred with commanders Wednesday on the "difficult" fight against Islamic State jihadists as the U.S. military warned air power alone could not prevent the group from seizing a key Syrian border town.

After a meeting with top brass at the Pentagon, Obama said there would be no easy victory against the IS group but said a growing international coalition was resolved to confront the Sunni extremists rampaging in Iraq and Syria.

Pro-Kurdish protesters angered by the Turkish government's lack of action against jihadists in Syria clashed for the third night running with police as the death toll from the violence rose to 22, officials said Thursday.

To the fury of Turkey's Kurds, Ankara has not intervened militarily against Islamic State (IS) jihadists trying to take the mainly Kurdish Syrian town of Kobane on the Turkish border.

France said Wednesday it backed a proposal by Ankara to create a safe zone along its border with Syria to ensure Turkey's security and host refugees fleeing Islamic State militants.

In a phone call with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President Francois Hollande "gave his support to the idea... of creating a buffer zone between Syria and Turkey to host and protect displaced people," the French presidency said in a statement.

Hizbullah on Wednesday seized control of the so-called Umm Khorj post, from which militants launched their Sunday attack on the party's Ain Saa post in Brital's outskirts, amid reports that a Hizbullah fighter was “captured” in the Bqal al-Assal area in Syria's Qalamun.

In remarks to al-Jadeed TV, a Hizbullah source confirmed that his group had taken Umm Khorj, noting that “it was the launchpad for al-Nusra (Front's) gunmen on Sunday and it strategically overlooks Assal al-Ward's mountains.”

Eleven members of the same family from the French city of Nice are believed to have left for Syria, of whom some are suspected of planning to fight alongside jihadists, a judicial source said Wednesday.

The anti-terrorist section of the Paris public prosecutor's office has opened an investigation into the disappearance of the family, acting on a "stack of evidence" pointing to their departure to Syria, the source said.

The Internal Security Forces on Wednesday arrested a Syrian man who had been purchasing weapons in Lebanon with the aim of smuggling them into Syria, which he intended to enter via Shebaa's mountains.

“A patrol from the Marjeyoun bureau apprehended the Syrian A. Kh. on charges of conducting suspicious activities in the Hasbaya region,” state-run National News Agency reported.

Serbia's prosecutor for organized crime said Wednesday he has charged five men for terrorism over recruiting, financing and transporting fighters for conflict in Syria.

The five are accused of "joining forces to finance terrorism, train and recruit people for terrorist acts," the prosecutor Miljko Radisavljevic said in a statement received by Agence France-Presse.

Turkey detained dozens of Kurds who crossed the border from the besieged Syrian town of Kobane on suspicion of having links with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), officials said Wednesday.

A local official in the Turkish border town of Suruc told AFP around 265 people were taken into custody for fingerprint identification after they crossed from the mainly Kurdish town under attack from IS jihadists.

Three months ago, Karwan Baban said goodbye to Germany and drove his minibus to his native Kurdistan to join the peshmerga battling Islamic State jihadists.

After a five-day road trip through Austria, eastern Europe and Turkey to northern Iraq, he slipped into his peshmerga uniform: "Herr Baban" the Duesseldorf import-export manager had become "Colonel Karwan".

Jihadists fighting to take the strategic Syrian border town of Kobane advanced Wednesday despite intensified U.S.-led air strikes.

Kobane has become a symbol of resistance against the Islamic State group, which proclaimed an Islamic "caliphate" across swathes of Iraq and Syria, carrying out beheadings and other atrocities.