Western-backed rebels to join fight against ISIL in Kobani

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan says deal has been reached for hundreds of FSA fighters to assist Kurds in northern border town.

A woman holds a pair of binoculars while watching the fighting between Syrian Kurdish fighters and ISIL militants in Kobani from the Turkish side of the border. Sedat Suna / EPA

MURSITPINAR, Turkey // Hundreds of western-backed Syrian rebels are to reinforce Kurdish fighters defending the border town of Kobani from ISIL, Turkey’s president said on Friday.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the Syrian Kurds had “accepted 1,300 people” from the Free Syrian Army and “are holding talks to determine the transit route”.

His remarks came as Washington voiced confidence that the fall of the town to ISIL fighters could be averted.

Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region also plans to send reinforcements to Kobani, which has held off an assault by the extremist militants for more than five weeks.

US-led airstrikes have helped the Kurdish defenders, but commanders have complained that their forces are exhausted and need help.

However, Syrian Kurdish officials reacted coolly to Mr Erdogan’s statement, with one saying it would be better if the rebels opened fronts against ISIL in other parts of the country.

“Any force that enters our areas without our permission would be considered an enemy force,” said Bulat Jan, a spokesman for the Kurdish Popular Defence Committees.

He stopped short of saying whether the Kurds would turn away the rebels.

Turkey has tightly controlled the flow of fighters and weapons to Kobani because of its defenders’ links to the outlawed rebel Kurdistan Workers Party, which has fought a three-decade insurgency in south-eastern Turkey.

The Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters will head for Kobani next week, according to Halgord Hekmat, the spokesman for the ministry responsible for them.

He said the lightly armed reinforcements would not exceed 200 fighters.

He declined to say what route they would take, but Turkeyhas said it would allow them transit.

On Friday, Syrian Kurdish forces retook a strategic hill overlooking Kobani after coalition air strikes put ISIL fighters to flight the previous evening.

An official at US military central command said: “I think the Kurdish defenders ... are going to be able to hold.”

That was a sharp change in assessment from Sunday, when US officials spoke of a crisis situation as Washington made its first arms drops to the town’s defenders.

US-led aircraft have flown nearly 6,600 sorties in the air war against ISIL in Iraq and Syria, and dropped more than 1,700 bombs, the US military said.

The strikes have helped avert Kobani’s fall but have not stopped ISIL making new gains in parts of Iraq, where a US official acknowledged it could be months before government forces were ready to mount a major fightback.

The militants have captured more ground west of Baghdad in recent days, further reducing the government’s shaky hold on Sunni-dominated Anbar province.

Iraqi security forces are able to stage small-scale attacks against ISIL, but need time to plan and train for a larger operation, even with the aid of US-led airstrikes, the US official said.

“It’s well within their capability to do that [counter-attack], on the order of months, not years,” the official said.

But “it’s not imminent”.

The French military said on Friday that the US-led coalition had dropped about 70 bombs on an arsenal and militant training centre overnight.

French fighter jets took part in the operation, which destroyed buildings in which ISIL militants “produced their traps, their bombs, their weapons to attack Iraqi forces”, chief of the defence staff Pierre de Villiers said.

“Some 70 bombs were dropped, we fired 12 laser-guided bombs and we hit our target.”

The French president Francois Hollande said his country would “speed up” its operations in Iraq, saying ISIL must be “struck hard”.

Meanwhile, the United States is seeking more information on reports that the militants used chlorine gas against Iraqi police officers last month, secretary of state John Kerry said.

The Washington Post reported that 11 Iraqi police officers had been taken to hospital last month suffering from dizziness, vomiting and shortage of breath and diagnosed as having been hit by poison gas.

Iraqi forces said two other crude chlorine gas attacks have occurred since the summer, but the Post said the details were unclear.

* Agence France-Presse