BEIRUT (AP) – Hundreds of Kurdish fighters have crossed from Turkey and Iraq into neighboring Syria to defend a Kurdish area under attack by Islamic State militants, as leaders of the ethnic group appealed for international assistance in their battle against the extremists.
The movement of the Kurdish fighters into Syria reflected the ferocity of the fighting in the northern Kobani area, which borders Turkey. Militants of the extremist Islamic State group have been barreling through the area over the past three days, seizing villages and forcing at least 60,000 Syrian Kurds to flee into Turkey.
“Kobani is facing the fiercest and most barbaric attack in its history,” said official Mohammed Saleh Muslim, head of Syria’s powerful Kurdish Democratic Union. The groups’ members dominate the Syrian Kurdish group known as the YPK, which is fighting the Islamic State militants.
“Kobani calls on all those who defend humane and democratic values … to stand by Kobani and support it immediately. The coming hours are decisive,” he said in a message sent to reporters.
On Friday, the president of Iraq’s largely autonomous Kurdish region, Masoud Barzani, warned that the Islamic State group’s attacks on the Kobani area in northern Syria “threaten the whole entirety of the Kurdish nation and it has targeted the honor, dignity and existence of our people.”