Kurdish fighters defending Syria's border town of Kobane held out against the Islamic State group today, anxious for relief as Iraq's Kurdish parliament was set to vote on sending reinforcements.
Backed by air strikes from a US-led coalition, the Kurds have been defending the town on the Turkish border against a fierce IS offensive for more than a month.
After initially losing ground to the jihadists the Kurds have fought back hard, with the US military saying yesterday they had halted the IS advance and remained in control of most of Kobane.
They were given a boost this week by the first US air drop of weapons and other supplies, though one of the parachuted crates was reported to have fallen into IS hands.
Now local Kurds say they need reinforcements, after Turkey announced Monday it would allow Kurdish fighters from Iraq to travel to the town, which has become a crucial symbolic battleground in the fight against IS.
A senior lawmaker in Iraq's Kurdish regional parliament told AFP it would vote later Wednesday on deploying its peshmerga forces to the battle for Kobane.
"Today, the Kurdistan parliament will hold a session... To give the authorisation and allow the president of the region to move forces to the town of Kobane" in Syria, Omid Khoshnaw, the head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party's parliamentary bloc, told AFP.
Kurdish forces have played a leading role in northern Iraq in combatting IS, which has seized large parts of the country and neighbouring Syria, declaring an Islamic "caliphate" in areas under its control.
Idris Nassen, a local Kurdish official, told AFP that no steps had yet been taken to coordinate the flow of Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces to Kobane.
"We have to be informed. Without any coordination any crossing will be impossible," he said, adding that there had been "fierce clashes" late Tuesday with IS attacking Kurdish positions from three directions.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 18 IS fighters were killed in the clashes on Tuesday and three more in US-led air strikes.
Three Kurdish fighters were also killed, said the Observatory, a Britain-based monitoring group with a broad network of sources inside Syria.
IS fighters are reported to have suffered heavy losses in the battle for Kobane, especially after the coalition dramatically increased strikes on their positions last week.
