Iraqi Kurdish forces enter Syria to fight Islamic State

A first group of Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters entered the besieged Syrian town of Kobani on Thursday to help push back Islamic State militants who have defied US airstrikes and threatened to massacre its Kurdish defenders.

Kobani, on the border with Turkey, has been encircled by the Sunni Muslim insurgents for more than 40 days. Weeks of US-led airstrikes have failed to break their stranglehold, and Kurds are hoping the arrival of the peshmerga will turn the tide.

The siege of Kobani — known in Arabic as Ayn al-Arab — has become a test of the US-led coalition's ability to stop Islamic State's advance, and Washington has welcomed the peshmerga's deployment.

A first contingent of about 10 peshmerga fighters crossed into Kobani from Turkey, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Kurdish and Turkish officials said a larger deployment was expected within hours.

"That initial group, I was told, is here to carry out the planning for our strategy going forward," said Meryem Kobane, a commander with the YPG, the main Syrian Kurdish armed group defending the town.

"They need to make preparations so the peshmerga will be positioned according to our needs," she told Reuters.

Around 100 peshmerga fighters arrived by plane in southeastern Turkey on Wednesday, joined later that night by a land convoy of vehicles carrying heavy weapons including a cannon and truck-mounted high-calibre machine guns.

In a compound protected by Turkish security forces near the border town of Suruc, the fighters were donning combat fatigues and preparing their weapons, a Reuters correspondent said.

Syria condemned Turkey for allowing foreign fighters and "terrorists" to enter Syria in a violation of its sovereignty. Its foreign ministry described the move as a "disgraceful act."

More troops possible

Iraqi Kurdistan President Masoud Barzani said his region was prepared to deploy more forces to Kobani if asked.

"Whenever the situation on the ground necessitates and more forces are requested from us and there is passage for them, we will send more forces to protect Kobani and defeat terrorists in Western Kurdistan," he said in a statement.

Islamic State has caused international alarm by capturing large expanses of Iraq and Syria, declaring an Islamic "caliphate" that has erased borders between the two.

Its fighters have slaughtered or driven away Shi'ite Muslims, Christians and other communities who do not share their ultra-radical brand of Sunni Islam.

In Iraq, the bodies of 150 members of a Sunni tribe which fought Islamic State have been found in a mass grave, security officials said on Thursday. Islamic State militants took the men from their villages to the city of Ramadi and killed them on Wednesday night.

The United States and its allies in the coalition have made clear they do not plan to send troops to fight Islamic State in Syria or Iraq, but they need fighters on the ground to capitalize on their airstrikes.

Syrian Kurds have called for the international community to provide them with heavier weapons and munitions and they have received an air drop from the United States.

But Turkey accuses Kurdish groups in Kobani of links to the militant PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party), which has fought a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state and is regarded as a terrorist group by Ankara, Washington and the European Union.

Ankara fears Syria's Kurds will exploit the chaos by following their brethren in Iraq and seeking to carve out an independent state in northern Syria, emboldening PKK militants in Turkey and derailing a fragile peace process.

That has complicated efforts to provide aid and meant the negotiations with Turkey to enable the passage of the peshmerga were delicate and complex.

"If (Islamic State) defeats the Kurds in Kobani it will lead to a reaction amongst the Kurds around the world, including Turkey," said Fuad Hussein, chief of staff to Barzani.

"There is huge interaction: what happens here, what happens in Kobani, what happens in Turkey: it affects each other so we must manage it," he told Reuters.

The peshmerga fighters were given a heroes' welcome as their convoy of jeeps and flatbed trucks snaked its way for around 250 miles through Turkey's mostly Kurdish southeast on Wednesday.

A senior Turkish government official said Turkey — which has refused to send its own troops across the border to confront Islamic State — welcomed the peshmerga's arrival and said that the rest of contingent that arrived in Turkey was expected to enter Kobani later on Thursday.

(Additional reporting by Omer Berberoglu in Suruc, Isabel Coles in Arbil; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Giles Elgood)