Kurdish fighters from Iraq, Syria jointly thwart ISIS border attack

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Kurdistan Region’s Peshmerga forces and Syrian Kurdish fighters jointly repelled an Islamic State (ISIS) attack on the strategic Tel Kocher border crossing late Sunday, a military official said.

An officer from the Peshmerga’s Safeen unit told Rudaw they intervened to thwart the attack on the Syria-Iraq border after receiving a call for help by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the main military force in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava).

“A group of ISIS militants attacked the YPG at 9:30 pm last night at the Tel Kocher border crossing and the YPG asked for our assistance,” the Peshmerga officer said. “After getting permission from our senior leaders we went to assist them with heavy weapons and defeated the ISIS fighters."

He added that the fighting ended with “heavy casualties” on the ISIS, but none on YPG or Peshmerga fighters. The two forces control each side of the border.

The joint fighting took place as some 150 Peshmerga forces await permission from Turkey to cross into Kobane in Syrian Kurdistan to help the YPG thwart a takeover of the besieged city by ISIS.

Senior Kurdistan officials told Rudaw Monday that Erbil is awaiting word from Turkey to deploy its Peshmerga troops to Kobane, which has been the site of heavy fighting and coalition bombings for weeks.

Meanwhile, Syrian Kurdish leader Salih Muslim on Monday rebuffed comments by the Turkish president that he had opposed Peshmerga reinforcements from Iraqi Kurdistan, saying they were ready to deploy but for reasons unknown to him had not yet arrived.

Muslim, co-chair of Syria's largest Kurdish faction, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), told Turkey's CNN Turk television channel he did not believe the Peshmerga would try to take over from his fighters defending the town and accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of meddling.

Earlier Monday, Peshmerga forces killed seven ISIS militants in an ambush near the town of Zumar, said Kamil Harki, commander of the Peshmerga forces in the area.

Peshmerga forces last week recaptured Zumar, a strategic town on a highway connecting ISIS territory in Syria to Mosul, their largest city in Iraq.

In other fighting, Peshmerga forces on the Kirkuk front exchanged fire with ISIS near the village of Mala Abdullah.

Bapir Sheikh Wasani, commander of the Peshmerga’s 4th battalion, said the fighting broke out when the Peshmerga tried to stop Islamist militants from constructing a watchtower overlooking Kurdish lines.

In Erbil, Kurdish military officials on Monday held a weekly meeting with representatives of the US-led coalition to discuss their anti-ISIS strategy.