Damascus/Baghdad, Oct 30 (IANS) Ten Iraqi Peshmerga fighters crossed the Turkish borders into Syria’s predominantly Kurdish town of Kobane Thursday even as the Syrian government accused Turkey of violating its border.
The 10 fighters are the first batch to enter the city since Turkey allowed the Iraqi Peshmerga to join the fight in Kobane, also known as Ayn al-Arab, against the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group, Xinhua reported citing the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights .
The observatory said more Peshmerga fighters were expected to cross the borders into Kobane within the next few hours.
The Peshmerga forces, sent by the Kurdish regional government in Iraq, will help Syrian Kurds in their fight against the IS extremists, just a couple of days after Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Iraqi Kurdish forces could cross Turkey’s territory into Syria at any moment to fight the IS.
The IS unleashed its wide-scale offensive against Kobane bordering Turkey Sep 15 in a bid to capture the city. This would have enabled the Sunni radical group to link its self-declared capital of al-Raqqa province 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 to neighbouring Turkey.
Howver, Syria Thursday accused Turkey of violating its borders by allowing Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces and Syrian rebels to enter Kobane, Syria’s national television reported.
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 as saying 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 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 Kobane. 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.
Meanwhile, Iraq’s regional Kurdish President Masoud Barzani said Thursday that his region was ready to send more forces if asked to protect Kobane from the attacks of the IS.
“We will send more troops at any moment if needed on the ground and if we will be asked to do so after clearing the road (for Kurdish forces) to go there, in order to protect Ayn al-Arab and defeat the terrorists in West Kurdistan,” , the regional government said in a statement quoting Barzani.
Barzani named the Kurdish area in northeastern Syria as West Kurdistan, referring to the announced ambitions of the Kurds to build their homeland in parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran.
“We have talked with the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria and offered a large force from the Peshmerga to go to Ayn al-Arab, but they said they don’t need fighting troops, only support troops, therefore we decided to send a support force to Ayn al-Arab,” Barzani said.
The brutal attacks by the terrorists against the people of Kurdistan showed that the IS Sunni radical militants not only held religious extremism, but they held religious, national and racial extremism together, Barzani said.
“We are proud to fight the most extremist terrorist organisation on behalf of humanity,” Barzani added.
On Oct 22, the Kurdish regional parliament passed a law to send regional forces abroad to support Kurdish fighters fighting the IS militants in Kobane.