TURKEY-SYRIA BORDER - A Peshmerga unit was assembled five minutes drive from Kobane on Wednesday, awaiting other men and weapons coming by road from the Kurdistan Region.
The first contingent flew in overnight from Erbil and the road units crossed the Turkish border from Iraq in the early hours.
They are the first foreign soldiers to be dispatched to the Syrian Kurdish border town which has been under siege by Islamic State (ISIS) for more than 40 days. Local Kurdish fighters have held out with backing from US-led airstrikes.
Meanwhile, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) said 200 of its fighters had entered Kobane at the request of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Syrian-Kurdish force that has been defending the city against an ISIS takeover.
“We had coordination with YPG to enter the city,” Abdul Jabbar al-Ageddi, the FSA’s general commander in Kobane, told Rudaw.
“It’s also expected in the near future that a larger number of us go, but for the current situation -- given the difficulty of moving inside the city -- this number of forces is sufficient,” he said.
Al-Ageddi added that the FSA fighters were lightly armed: “The weapons that we have are not heavy, as they consist of simple missiles, Kalashnikovs, and rocket propelled grenades (RPGs).”
Turkey’s intelligence agency MIT was ordered to coordinate the crossing of the Peshmerga into Syria, according to the Hurriyet daily.
The newspaper reported the Turkish army saying it was unwilling to undertake the task, and would only be involved during the Kurdish soldiers’ crossing of the military zone at the border.
The United States welcomed the deployment of Peshmerga forces to Kobane on Tuesday, saying it was a step to "degrade and ultimately defeat" ISIS.
More than 800 people died in the first 40 days of fighting in Kobane, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimated this week.
It said it had documented the deaths of 21 Kurdish civilians, 481 ISIS militants and 302 fighters from the YPG.
The monitoring group said the actual death toll could be twice as high, because both sides were remaining silent on casualties, and many areas that had suffered heavy clashes and bombardment were difficult to access.
US General Lloyd Austin, commander of the US military’s Central Command, thanked the Kurdistan Region for its support to Kobane in a meeting in Erbil with Kurdish President Massoud Barzani and other officials.
Barzani told Austin: “Our enemies can no longer confront us directly and the Peshmerga are stronger than ever to protect Kurdistan from the Islamic State."
He thanked American forces for what they had done for Kobane, where US warplanes have been pounding ISIS targets. Barzani said setbacks for ISIS in the northwestern Iraqi towns of Rabia and Zumar had damaged the group’s morale.
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