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 Kobani, on the border with Turkey, has been encircled by the Sunni
Muslim insurgents for more than 40 days. Weeks of U.S.-led air
strikes 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 U.S.-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 Sur, the fighters were donning combat fatigues and preparing
their weapons, a Reuters correspondent said.
Iraqi Kurdistan President Mason Barani 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
erases 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.
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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
air strikes.
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.
That has complicated efforts to provide aid.
The Kurdish fighters were given a heroes' welcome as their convoy of
jeeps and flatbed trucks snaked its way for around 400 km (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)
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