SURUC, Turkey // Heavily armed Iraqi peshmerga forces reached the Turkish border on Thursday as an advance group entered the Syrian town of Kobani to join fellow Kurds battling ISIL.
The group of 10 fighters were to coordinate with local Kurdish militia who have been holding off an assault by the Islamist extremists for six weeks.
A peshmerga convoy reached the town of Suruc on the Turkish side of the border Thursday, after travelling through south-eastern Turkey along roads clogged with flag-waving Kurds.
There it linked up with a second group of peshmerga who had flown in on Wednesday, but it was not clear when the main force would cross into Kobani.
Officials have said there are about 150 peshmerga fighters in total, armed with machineguns, heavy artillery and rocket launchers.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said ISIL fighters were pounding northern areas of Kobani bordering Turkey with mortars and heavy artillery on Thursday, in an apparent bid to prevent the peshmerga from crossing.
They launched an assault on a northern neighbourhood overnight but were pushed back by forces from the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia, the observatory said.
“The bombardment of the border area will likely delay the entry of the peshmerga” into Kobani, said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman, whose group relies on a network of sources inside Syria.
The peshmerga reinforcements were waiting in a storage facility in Suruc, 10 kilometres from the border, which was heavily guarded by Turkish security forces.
The Observatory said the small group of peshmerga that had entered Kobani were there to “coordinate the arrival of their comrades”.
Kobani has become an important symbol of the battle against ISIL, which has seized swathes of Syria and Iraq, committing atrocities and declaring an Islamic “caliphate”.
A US-led coalition carrying out air raids against the group has intensified attacks near Kobani in recent days. The Pentagon said its fighter jets and bombers made 10 strikes in the area on Wednesday and Thursday.
The coalition carried out two strikes elsewhere in Syria and two more in Iraq, it said.
Washington has also dropped weapons to Kobani’s defenders, who had received little in the way of reinforcements until now.
Under pressure from the United States, Turkey agreed last week to allow the peshmerga to cross its territory to Kobani.
Turkey also allowed dozens of rebel fighters of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) to cross into Kobani on Wednesday, but they were lightly armed and unlikely to make a crucial difference in the battle.
However, the commander of the FSA unit in Kobani said it already had 400 fighters in the town and more were on the way.
Nizar Al Khatib said in Istanbul that a command post had been set up to coordinate between his forces and the Kurdish fighters in Kobani.
Mr Al Khatib said FSA forces had been present around Kobani even before the current fighting started.
“There were 200 of us from the region even before the first fighting started ... and now there are almost 400 of us and we are expecting other reinforcements,” he said.
The commander said coordination was good between the FSA forces and the Kurdish factions, who have not always been allies in Syria’s civil war.
“The command of Kobane is not in the hands of a single individual,” he said. “There is a command post where all the forces present are represented and take decisions together.”
Turkey is a strong supporter of the FSA, which is fighting to overthrow Syrian president Bashar Al Assad’s regime, but has been wary of giving support to the YPG militia, which has close links with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that has fought a three-decade insurgency in south-east Turkey.
The Syrian regime on Thursday denounced Turkey for allowing peshmerga fighters to cross the border.
“Once again, Turkey has shown its conspiratorial role ... by allowing foreign forces and terrorist groups to enter Syria,” the foreign ministry said.
“This constitutes a flagrant violation of Syrian sovereignty.”
In Iraq, hundreds of soldiers and pro-government fighters were gathering for an assault on the strategic militant-held northern town of Baiji.
“Iraqi forces are massing at the town of Baiji, preparing to enter the town and regain control of it,” said Lieutenant General Abdulwahab Al Saadi, who heads the provincial military command.
Baiji lies on the main highway to Iraq’s ISIL-controlled second city Mosul and the assault could open the way to breaking the militants’ months-long siege of government forces defending Iraq’s largest oil refinery, which is located near the town.
ISIL arose in the chaos of Syria’s civil war, which has killed more than 180,000 people and forced millions from their homes in the past three-and-a-half years.
The regime has been accused of carrying out widespread abuses in its fight against a diverse array of rebels including ISIL, other Islamist groups, and secular forces.
The Observatory said Syrian aircraft bombed a camp for displaced people in the north-western province of Idlib on Wednesday, killing at least 10 people and wounding dozens more.
The United States, which backs moderate Syrian rebel groups, denounced the attack as “nothing short of barbaric”.
* Agence France Presse
