Kobani Battle Rages as First Peshmerga Group to Head for Town

Fierce clashes between Takfiri militants, ISIL, and Kurdish fighters are still going in Syria’s northern town of Kobani, with the first of Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government forces, known as Peshmerga, will head for the town.

Reports coming out of the town on Saturday said ISIL had made a new attempt to capture Kobani.

The militants attacked the Kurdish forces with mortar and heavy machine gun fire before dawn. Fierce clashes between Kurdish fighters and ISIL terrorists in Kobani

This came after Kurdish fighters had gained control of a strategic hill overlooking the town on Friday.

Meanwhile, Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region has decided to send reinforcement troops to Kobani next week to aid Kurds.

According to Peshmerga officials, 150 Kurdish fighters will be dispatched to the strategic city on Sunday to assist in the battle against the ISIL Takfiri 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 city 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.