The first contingent of Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government forces, known as Peshmerga, will head for Syria’s strategic town of Kobani.
According to Peshmerga officials, 150 Kurdish fighters will be dispatched to the strategic town on Sunday to assist in the battle against the ISIL militants.
Sihad Barzani, the commander of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s artillery brigade and brother of the KRG president, Massoud Barzani, is said to lead the first detachment of the force that could include over 1,000 soldiers.
“This support force will speed up the fight of the Kobani Kurds,” Kurdish newspaper Rudaw quoted a high ranking Peshmerga commander, Brigadier General Mashia Ramazan Fattah, with the 2nd infantry brigade, as saying.
Ramazan further said that the Kurdish forces will be equipped with heavy weapons. “Our enemies in Kobani are using heavy weapons and we should have heavy weapons too,” Ramazan added.
The Kurdish fighters will enter the key town via Turkey.
The Peshmerga forces are packed and ready to move through Turkey “without a passport and they need only their military IDs,” a high-ranking KRG source told Rudaw.
Reports coming out of the town on Saturday said ISIL had made a new attempt to capture Kobani.
Kobani and its surroundings have been under attack since mid-September, with the ISIL militants capturing dozens of nearby Kurdish villages.
The ISIL advance in the region has forced tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds to flee into Turkey, which is a stone’s throw from Kobani.
Turkey continues to block any delivery of military, medical or humanitarian assistance into Kobani, where the ISIL terrorists are feared to be aiming at massive bloodletting.
