Syrian rebels enter Kurdish town from Turkey
Published 10:09 am Wednesday, October 29, 2014
MURSITPINAR, Turkey — For the first time since the Islamic State group launched an offensive on the Syrian border town of Kobani last month, a small group of Syrian rebels on Wednesday entered the embattled town from Turkey in a push to help Kurdish fighters there battle the militants, activists and Kurdish officials said.
The group of around 50 armed men is from the Free Syrian Army, and it’s separate from Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters who were also en route Wednesday to Kobani, along the Syrian-Turkish border.
Idriss Nassan, a Kurdish official from Kobani, said the FSA group entered Kobani through the Mursitpinar border crossing in Turkey. Nassan, who spoke from the border region in Turkey, said they travelled in cars but did not have more details.
The FSA is an umbrella group of mainstream rebels fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad. The political leadership of the Western-backed FSA is based in Turkey, where fighters often seek respite from the fighting.
The 150 Iraqi peshmerga troops, along with cannons and heavy machine guns, arrived in Turkey from Iraq early Wednesday and were expected to cross into Syria later in the day. Their deployment came after Ankara agreed to allow the peshmerga troops to cross into Syria via Turkey.
Kurdish fighters in Syria, known as the People’s Protection Units or YPG, have been struggling to defend Kobani — also known as Ayn Arab — against the Islamic State group since mid-September, despite dozens of coalition airstrikes against the extremists.
It is not clear what impact this small but battle-hardened combined force of FSA and peshmerga fighters — and their combined weaponry and added arsenal — will have in the battle for Kobani. Kurdish fighters are already sharing information with the coalition to coordinate strikes against Islamic State militants there but the new force may help improve efforts and offer additional battlefield support.
Hundreds of people gathered in a square and along a main street in the Turkish town of Suruc, near the border with Syria, waiting for the peshmerga.
