Iraqi Peshmerga Groups Link up in Turkey Border Town

Local Editor

Two groups of Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters set to join the fight for Kobane linked up Thursday in a Turkish border town but have yet to cross the border into Syria.

A convoy of peshmerga fighters carrying heavy weaponry and travelling by road arrived in the Turkish border town of Suruc after a painstakingly slow journey across Turkey.

There they were met by a second group of Iraqi pershmerga who had arrived by air in the region's main city of Sanliurfa in the early hours of Wednesday and then moved on to Suruc to await their comrades.

But it was still unclear when the fighters would cross the Turkish border to join the fight for the mainly-Kurdish Syrian town of Kobane against the "ISIL" militants.

They were waiting in a storage facility in Suruc, 10 kilometres from the border, which was heavily guarded by Turkish security forces who were not allowing media to approach close.

It took the road convoy some 24 hours to make the around 400 kilometre journey from the Iraqi border to Suruc, held up along the way by crowds of Turkish Kurds who greeted their arrival.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team