Iraqi Kurds head to fight IS in Syria

A group of Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga troops arrived in Turkey early Wednesday and headed toward the border to help Syrian Kurds fight the Islamic State group i(IS) n the embattled town of Kobani.

The unprecedented mission by the 150 fighters to help fellow Kurds in their battle with the Islamic State group came after Ankara agreed to allow the peshmerga to cross into Syria via Turkey — although the Turkish prime minister reiterated that his country would not be sending any ground forces of its own to Kobani.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told the BBC that sending the peshmerga was "the only way to help Kobani, since other countries don't want to use ground troops."

The IS group launched its offensive on Kobani and nearby Syrian villages in mid-September, and fighting there has since killed more than 800 people, according to activists. The Sunni group has captured dozens of Kurdish villages around Kobani and control parts of the town. More than 200,000 people have fled across the border into Turkey.

The US is leading a coalition that has carried out dozens of airstrikes targeting the militants in and around Kobani.

The deployment of the 150 peshmerga fighters, who were authorized by the Iraqi Kurdish government to go to Kobani, underscores the sensitive political tensions in the region.

Turkey's government views the Syrian Kurds defending Kobani as loyal to what Ankara regards as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. That group has waged a 30-year insurgency in Turkey and is designated a terrorist group by the US and Nato.

Under pressure to take greater action against the IS militants — from the West as well as from Kurds inside Turkey and Syria — the Turkish government agreed to let the fighters cross through its territory. But it only is allowing the peshmerga forces from Iraq, with whom it has a good relationship, and not those from the PKK.

A separate Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga convoy of Toyota Land Cruisers and trucks carrying cannons and machine guns crossed into Turkey early Wednesday at the Ibrahim Khalil border crossing at Zakho in northern Iraq en route to Kobani.

 

The Kurds of Syria and Iraq have become a major focus in the war against the Islamic State group, with Kurdish populations in both countries under significant threat by the militants' lightning advance as they seek to establish an Islamic caliphate in the region.

The Kurdish parliament voted overwhelmingly to send fighters to Kobani, underscoring the growing cooperation among the Kurds in Iraq and Syria. The action marked the first mission for the peshmerga outside Iraq.