Iraqi Kurdish leader vows to send more forces to Syrian town if asked

Iraq's regional Kurdish President Masoud Barzani said Thursday that his region is ready to send more forces if asked to protect the Syrian town of Kobane, also known as Ayn al-Arab, from the attacks of the extremist Islamic State (IS) terrorist group, the regional government said in a statement.

"We will send more troops at any moment if needed on the ground and if we will be asked to do so after clearing the road (for Kurdish forces) to go there, in order to protect Ayn al-Arab and defeat the terrorists in West Kurdistan," the statement quoted Barzani as saying.

Barzani named the Kurdish area in northeastern Syria as West Kurdistan, referring to the announced ambitions of the Kurds to build their homeland in parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran, Xinhua reported.

"We have talked with the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria and offered a large force from the Peshmerga to go to Ayn al-Arab, but they said they don't need fighting troops, only support troops, therefore we decided to send a support force to Ayn al-Arab," Barzani said.

The brutal attacks by the terrorists against the people of Kurdistan showed that the IS Sunni radical militants not only held religious extremism, but they held religious, national and racial extremism together, Barzani said.

"We are proud to fight the most extremist terrorist organisation on behalf of humanity," Barzani added.

On Oct 22, the Kurdish regional parliament passed a law to send regional forces abroad to support Kurdish fighters fighting the IS militants in Kobane.