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Erdogan: Kobani drops 'wrong'

October 22, 2014

Turkey's president has criticized munitions airdrops by the US to Kurdish fighters in the Syrian town of Kobani. The US military has announced that most supplies had reached the units that they were intended to help.

https://p.dw.com/p/1DZrS
Syria: US weapons
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo

On Tuesday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the weapons airdropped Sunday by the United States had fallen into the hands of the Democratic Union Party - a Syrian Kurdish group that Turkey does not support - and also into the hands of "Islamic State" (IS) jihadists. The United States had airdropped the military supplies to Kurdish fighters defending the Syrian town of Kobani, on the border with Turkey.

"It has become clear that this was wrong," Erdogan told reporters in Turkey's capital, Ankara, on Wednesday. "Why did it turn out wrong? Because some of the weapons they dropped from those C130s were seized by ISIL," Erdogan added, using an alternative acronym that refers to the group's former name: the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.

On Tuesday, Pentagon press secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby had said that experts were analyzing a video posted by IS boasting that it had captured the weapons. Kirby admitted that at least one bundle of weapons had not reached its intended target.

Kobani
IS has besieged Kobani for weeksImage: Reuters/Kai Pfaffenbach

The errant bundle was thought to have been destroyed in a US airstrike, although the video suggests that that was not the case. Kirby said that intelligence experts were trying to determine whether the munitions had indeed gone astray.

The US has also supported Kurdish fighters in Kobani with airstrikes against IS. Meanwhile, Turkey has Turkey bombs Kurdish rebel targetslaunched attacks on Kurdish rebels# within its borders

mkg/sb (AFP, Reuters)