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 Kobani, nestled on the border with Turkey, has been under assault
from Islamic State militants for more than a month and its fate has
become a key test of the U.S.-led coalition's ability to combat the
Sunni insurgents.
Weeks of air strikes on Islamic State positions around Kobani and
the deaths of hundreds of their fighters have failed to break the
siege. Syrian Kurds and their international allies hope the arrival
of the peshmerga, along with heavier weapons, can turn the tide.
A Turkish Airlines plane touched down in the southeastern city of
Sanliurfa at around 1:15 a.m. (7.15 p.m. EDT) amid tight security, a
Reuters correspondent said. A convoy of white buses escorted by
armored jeeps and police cars left the airport shortly afterwards.
"They will be in our town today," Adham Basho, a member of the
Syrian Kurdish National Council from Kobani, said of the peshmerga,
confirming that a group of between 90 and 100 fighters had arrived
in Sanliurfa overnight.
A separate group of peshmerga is traveling to the Turkish border
region by land with heavier weapons. A Kurdish television channel
showed footage of what it said was a convoy of peshmerga vehicles
loaded with weapons en route to the area.
 Saleh Moslem, co-chair of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party
(PYD), said the peshmerga were expected to enter Kobani -- known as
Ayn al-Arab in Arabic -- later on Wednesday and would bring heavy
arms with them.
"It's mainly artillery, or anti-armor, anti-tank weapons," he said,
adding the equipment should help Syrian Kurdish fighters fend off
Islamic State insurgents who have used armored vehicles and tanks in
their assault.
RADICAL ISLAM
Islamic State has caused international alarm by capturing large
expanses of Iraq and Syria, declaring an Islamic "caliphate" erasing
borders between the two, and slaughtering or driving away Shi'ite
Muslims, Christians and other communities who do not share their
ultra-radical brand of Sunni Islam.
Fighters from the Nusra Front, al Qaeda's official affiliate in the
Syrian civil war, have meanwhile seized territory from moderate
rebels in recent days, expanding their control into one of the few
areas of northern Syria not already held by hardline Islamists.
In Iraq, security forces said they had advanced to within 2 km (1.2
miles) of the city of Baiji on Wednesday in a new offensive to
retake the country's biggest oil refinery that has been besieged
since June by Islamic State.
Islamic State fighters have threatened to massacre Kobani's
defenders in an assault which has sent almost 200,000 Syrian Kurds
fleeing to Turkey, and triggered a call to arms from Kurds across
the region.
At least a dozen shells fired by Islamic State fighters fell on the
town overnight as clashes with the main Syrian Kurdish armed group,
the YPG, continued, according to the Britain-based Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights.
It said preparations were being made at a border gate which Islamic
State fighters have repeatedly tried to capture for the arrival of
the peshmerga, while YPG and Islamic State forces exchanged fire in
gun battles on the southern edge of the town.
 The Observatory also said 50 Syrian fighters had entered Kobani from
Turkey with their weapons, though it was unclear which group they
belonged to. Turkey has pushed for moderate Syrian rebels fighting
President Bashar al-Assad to join the battle against Islamic State
in Kobani.
"PARTNER ON THE GROUND"
The Iraqi Kurdish region's parliament voted last week to deploy some
peshmerga to Syria and, under pressure from Western allies, Turkey
agreed to let peshmerga forces from Iraq traverse its territory to
reach Kobani.
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"We've advocated and been discussing the importance of allowing the
peshmerga across the border and the facilitation of that," U.S.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in Washington on
Tuesday. "This is one component. It’s certainly one that we felt
would be impactful and be important to have a partner on the ground
to work with," she said.
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 partners on the ground to capitalize on their
air strikes.
"What does Kobani show? That determined resistance on the ground
with American air power can push ISIS back," Henri Barkey, a former
State Department official who now teaches at Lehigh University, told
Reuters.
"They want to carry this to Iraq so that the peshmerga and Iraqi
army get their act together. They really need to win ... They
realized this was an opportunity for them because you have a real
fighting force on the ground ... That's the model."
Kurdistan's Minister of Peshmerga, Mustafa Sayyid Qader, told local
media on Tuesday that no limits had been set to how long the forces
would remain in Kobani. The Kurdistan Regional Government has said
the fighters would not engage in direct combat in Kobani but rather
provide artillery support.
Turkish officials have rebuffed international criticism over their
reluctance to do more to help Kobani's beleaguered Kurdish
defenders, whom they accuse of being linked to the militant
Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has fought a decades-long
insurgency against the Turkish state.
 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 Kurdish militants in Turkey and
derailing a fragile peace process.
The stance has enraged Turkey’s own Kurdish minority -- about a
fifth of the population and half of all Kurds across the region.
Kurds suspect Ankara would rather see Islamic State jihadists extend
their territorial gains than allow Kurdish insurgents to consolidate
local power.
Police shot into the air and fired teargas to disperse hundreds of
Kurdish supporters gathered at the Habur border gate overnight to
welcome the arrival of the peshmerga after they began throwing
stones into a police compound.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Tuesday that air
strikes alone would not be enough to push back the insurgents and
that only the peshmerga and moderate Syrian rebel forces could oust
Islamic State from Kobani.
(Additional reporting by Isabel Coles in Arbil, Omer Berberoglu and
Sasa Kavic in Sanliurfa, Tom Perry in Beirut; Writing by Nick
Tattersall; Editing by Giles Elgood)
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