The U.S. military and Turkey are helping to turn the tide in the Syrian border town of Kobani, after weeks of warning that the town would likely fall to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
U.S. military aircraft late Sunday airdropped arms, ammunition and medical supplies to Kurdish fighters in the town, and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters Monday that his country would allow Iraqi Kurdish fighters to cross its border to reinforce the town’s defenses.
Meanwhile, other U.S. warplanes bombed Islamic State positions around Kobani, military officials said. One of the strikes was aimed at destroying a bundle of airdropped supplies that had gone astray to keep it from falling into enemy hands, a statement said.
Kobani’s fate has widely been seen as a bellwether for how the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamist extremist group has stumbled lately. U.S. officials, after initially shrugging at the possibility the town would fall, have lately stepped up efforts to prevent that from happening.
Arming the town’s Kurdish defenders is a dramatic escalation of those efforts.
The U.S. Central Command said the weapons, ammunition and medical supplies dropped by Air Force C-130 cargo aircraft had been provided by Kurdish authorities in Iraq.
President Obama spoke by phone Sunday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to advise him of the operation, administration officials said.
Turkey opposed arming the Syrian Kurdish group that made up the bulk of the fighters in Kobani because of its ties with the outlawed Turkish Kurdish group PKK, which both Ankara and Washington view as a terrorist group.
In Indonesia, Secretary of State John Kerry strongly defended the airdrop of weapons, saying it would be “irresponsible” and “morally very difficult” not to help Kobani’s defenders.
“Let me say very respectfully to our allies the Turks that we understand fully the fundamentals of their opposition and ours to any kind of terrorist group and particularly obviously the challenges they face with respect the PKK,” Kerry told reporters. “But we have undertaken a coalition effort to degrade and destroy [the Islamic State], and [the Islamic State] is presenting itself in major numbers in this place called Kobani.”
This article was published at 9:17 a.m. and has been updated.
