[caption id="attachment_110008" align="alignright" width="141"] A Kurdish peshmerga soldier in northern Iraq. Thousands of residents are fleeing for Kurdistan ahead of the Isis advance. Photograph: Reuters[/caption]
Two groups of Iraqi Kurdish fighters have arrived in the Turkish border town of Suruj on their way to join their fellow fighters defending the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobani.
Earlier, another group of Iraqi fighters arrived by air and now have joined their comrades.
The convoys are now waiting in a storage facility that is heavily guarded by Turkish forces.
The Syrian town is besieged by militants with the ISIL Takfiri terrorist group.
ISIL launched its offensive on Kobani and nearby Syrian villages in mid-September, killing more than 800 people. The militants have captured dozens of Kurdish villages around Kobani and control parts of the town. More than 200,000 people have fled across the border into Turkey.
Syrian Kurds had for long been appealing to fellow Kurds in Iraq to send reinforcements.
However, Turkey, widely believed to be the key ISIL supporter, would refuse to allow Kurds to cross the border and join them in defending the town. Ankara fears that Kobani could be taken over by Syrian Kurds allied to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a group that has been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region in southeastern Turkey since the 1980s.
Ankara unexpectedly announced last week that it would allow the Peshmerga another name for the Kurdish fighters - to enter Kobani through the Turkish border. Analysts say Ankara, having already won the US green light, plans to let the terrorists seize the Kurdish town of Kobani before sending tanks and troops to fight them in a bid to capture and possibly annex the Syrian territory.