Middle East Eye reports: Scores of Kurds from the besieged Syrian town of Kobane are still on hunger strike after being detained by Turkish authorities in border town Suruc when they fled the advance of IS militants, 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 Suruc. The mostly middle class professionals and their families were taken into custody after crossing into Turkey on 5 October as IS threatened to overrun Kobane.

Ibrahim Ayhan, an MP from Turkey’s pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), said the detainees were continuing the hunger strike they launched after their arrest.