MURSITPINAR: Hundreds of Syrian rebels would likely reinforce Kurdish fighters defending the border town of Kobani, neighbouring Turkey said on Friday, as Washington voiced confidence that its fall to Islamist militants could be averted.

Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region also plans to send reinforcements to Kobani, which has held off a relentless assault from the Islamic State (IS) group for more than five weeks.

Know more: Iraqi Kurds approve deployment of fighters to Kobani

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

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the Syrian Kurds had “accepted 1,300 people from the (mainly Arab) Free Syrian Army and they are holding talks to determine the transit route”.

But Syrian Kurdish officials reacted coolly, with one saying it would be better if the rebels opened fronts against IS in other parts of the country.

Kurdish forces retake a strategic hill overlooking the border town

“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 (YPG).

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 (PKK), 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 they would likely pass through Turkey, which has said it would allow them transit.

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

Around 20 of them raised their yellow, red and green flag over Tall Shair hill, a correspondent on the Turkish side of the border reported.

An official at US 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 IS in Iraq and Syria, and dropped more than 1,700 bombs, the US military said.

The strikes have helped avert Kobani’s fall but not stopped IS from 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 Islamists 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 currently able to stage small-scale attacks against IS, but needed time to plan and train for a larger operation, even with the aid of US-led air strikes, 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 around 70 bombs on an arsenal and militant training centre overnight.

France’s Rafale fighter jets took part in the operation, which destroyed buildings in which IS 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.” French President Francois Hollande said his country would “speed up” its operations in Iraq.

The militants must be “struck hard”, he added.

Published in Dawn, October 25th , 2014