Damascus, Oct 30 (IANS) Syria Thursday accused Turkey of violating its borders by allowing Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces and Syrian rebels to enter the predominantly Kurdish city of Kobane on the Syrian-Turkish border, Syria’s national television rreported.
Turkey was conspiring against Syria and has premeditated intentions to interfere in Syrian affairs by allowing “foreign fighters and terrorist groups to enter the Syrian territories”, Xinhua cited the Syrian foreign ministry said in a statement.
The ministry referred to the Peshmerga as foreign fighters and regarded Syrian rebels as “terrorists.”
Syria said the Turkish move “constitutes a flagrant violation to Syrian sovereignty and the charters of the United Nations and international law”.
The ministry said the Turkish policy was “outrageous”, holding Ankara responsible for the Syrian crisis.
“Syria condemns and rejects this outrageous behaviour by the Turkish government and its accomplices for being responsible for the crisis and for the shedding of Syrian blood by supporting terrorist organisations like the Islamic State (IS) militant group and the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front,” it said.
The statement came about an hour after reports surfaced about the entry of the first batch of Peshmerga fighters into the Syria’s predominantly Kurdish city of Kobane, also known as Ayn al-Arab. Their entry into the city happened just a day after Turkey allowed Syrian rebels on its territories to cross into Kobane to fight alongside the Kurds.
The Peshmerga forces, sent by the Kurdish regional government in Iraq, will help their Syrian brethren in their fight against the IS extremists.
The IS unleashed its wide-scale offensive against Kobane Sep 15 in a bid to capture the city, which would enable the IS to link its self-declared capital of al-Raqqa with Kobane and stretch its territory to areas bordering Turkey.
The IS has captured more than 300 villages around the city and managed to storm parts of it after forcing over 160,000 people to flee for their lives into neighbouring Turkey.