SURUC, Turkey/BAGHDAD, (Reuters) – A convoy of Iraqi Kurdish forces in Turkey rolled late yesterday across the border into Syria to help Syrian Kurds defend the besieged town of Kobani that has become the focus of a Western-backed war against Islamic State insurgents.
U.S.-led air strikes hit Islamic State positions around Kobani earlier in the day in an apparent effort to pave the way for the heavily-armed Kurdish contingent to enter.
The Iraqi Kurdish fighters, known as peshmerga or “those who defy death”, had set off cheering and making victory signs in more than a dozen trucks and jeeps, accompanied by armoured vehicles and artillery. They headed from a holding point around 8 km (5 miles) from the frontier towards Kobani.
“We have crossed over,” one of the peshmerga fighters in the group subsequently told Reuters by telephone.
The force numbers only around 150 but brings weapons and ammunition. Their arrival would mark the first time Turkey has allowed ground troops from outside Syria to reinforce Syrian Kurds, who have been defending Kobani for more than 40 days.
As the peshmerga headed towards the border, a loud blast was heard in the Kobani area, the latest in a rapid series of explosions, in an apparent intensification of the fighting.
Despite having limited strategic significance, Kobani has become a powerful international symbol in the battle against the hardline Sunni Muslim insurgents who have captured large expanses of Iraq and Syria and declared an Islamic “caliphate”.
The Kobani battle has raged in full view of the Turkish frontier, testing whether a U.S.-led coalition can halt Islamic State’s advance. The failure of Turkey to help defend the town sparked riots among Turkish Kurds in which 40 people died.
Islamic State militants have killed or displaced Shi’ite Muslims, Christians and other communities deemed enemies of their ultra-radical brand of Sunni Islam. They executed at least 220 Iraqi Sunnis in retaliation for opposition to their takeover of territory west of Baghdad this week.
Earlier on Friday, machinegun fire could be heard from the Turkish side of the border as Islamic State fighters pounded the area near where the peshmerga were expected to cross.
In Iraq, government forces and Kurds have made gains against Islamic State in the north in recent weeks. But the U.S. air strikes have failed to stop the insurgents from advancing in Anbar, a vast western desert province straddling the Euphrates river valley from the Syrian border to Baghdad’s outskirts.
This week’s execution of tribesmen who resisted Islamic State’s advance in the Euphrates basin appears to be the worst mass killing of fellow Sunnis by a group previously known for slaughtering Shi’ites and non-Muslims.
