Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces crossed from Turkey into Syria’s besieged Kobane yesterday to help push back Islamic State insurgents encircling the mainly Kurdish town, a peshmerga fighter in the group said by telephone.
The peshmerga forces earlier set off in more than a dozen trucks and jeeps, escorted by armoured vehicles, from a holding point around 8km from the border towards Kobane, which has been besieged for more than 40 days.
The force numbers only around 150 but brings weapons and ammunition. Their arrival marks the first time Turkey has allowed ground troops from outside Syria to reinforce Syrian Kurds.
US-led air strikes hit Islamic State positions in Kobane earlier yesterday in an apparent bid to pave the way for the peshmerga forces to enter.
Earlier, 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 US air strikes have failed to stop the militants from advancing in Anbar province.
At least 220 bodies of men from the Albu Nimr tribe, seized by Islamic State days earlier, were found in mass graves in recent days. They had been shot at close range.
Washington hopes that tribes can be persuaded to switch sides and help the Baghdad government fight the militants.
But so far, tribes that resist Islamic State have faced harsh retribution while complaining of scant support from Baghdad.
Iraq’s most senior Shia cleric called on the government yesterday to rush to their aid.
“What is required from the Iraqi government ... is to offer quick support to the sons of this tribe and other tribes that are fighting Daesh (Islamic State) terrorists,” Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani said, in an address read out by an aide in the holy city of Karbala after Friday prayers.
