Peshmerga fighters head to Syria
October 28, 2014
A convoy of military trucks loaded with weapons from was reported to be setting off on Tuesday near Iraqi Kurdistan's capital Irbil, as military officials said peshmerga forces made their way via land and air to Turkey.
From there, they were due to cross over into Syria and support Kurdish forces in their fight for Kobani – though not in a direct combat role.
The AFP news agency, quoting an unnamed Kurdish officer, reported that about 80 of the fighters would travel by land and the remaining 72 would travel by plane. A total of more than 150 troops would take part in a deployment which was authoritzed by the government of the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region.
The northern Syrian town of Kobani, known in Arabic as Ayn al-Arab, has been a battleground for more than a month as local forces battle advances by "Islamic State" (IS) militants who also control large parts of Iraq and Syria.
The IS advance led 200,000 Syrians to flee across the nearby border into Turkey.
After long refusing to allow the peshmerga fighters or weapons through its territory into Kobani, Turkish authorities last week announced they would allow them through following pressure from Western allies.
The main Syrian Kurdish force fighting against IS in the town, the People's Protection Units (YPG) is linked with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which has fought a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state.
se/es (AFP, Reuters, AP)