Iraqi Kurdish Fighters Will Not Be Sent to Kobani

Iraqi Kurdish fighters will not engage in ground fighting in Kobani, but will provide artillery support for fellow Kurds resisting ISIS, a Kurdish spokesman told Reuters on Sunday.

The weapons would be “semi-heavy” and would enable the lightly armed Kurdish fighters in Kobani to counter ISIS tanks and armored vehicles, Reuters reports.

Syrian Kurdish forces say weapons delivered to them by U.S. airdrops were not enough to win the battle against ISIS.

Last week the Iraqi Kurdish Region’s parliament voted in favor of deploying some of its peshmerga forces to Kobani, after Turkey agreed to allow the fighters passage through its territory. Some 155 peshmerga fighters were expected to go to Turkey as soon as a timetable had been finalized with with Ankara and Kurds in Syria.

On Friday Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said 1,300 Free Syrian Army Fighters (FSA) would enter Kobani after the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) agreed on their passage. His comments were immediately denied by Saleh Muslim, co-chair of the PYD, and rejected by Senior Syrian Kurdish officials.

“Politically we have no objections to FSA … but in my opinion, if they really would like to help, then their forces should open another front, such as from Tel Abyad or Jarablus,” he told Reuters.

Turkey’s unwillingness to send its army to break the siege of Kobani has angered Kurds and upset Western allies as ISIS continues to take swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq. It has also led to unrest among Turkey’s Kurdish minority, who protested against the country’s inaction; those protests turned violent, killing 19 people earlier this month.

Syrian Kurds Resist ISIS Attack on Border Gate

Kurdish forces in Kobani have reportedly repelled an attempt by ISIS fighters to cut off the town from the border with Turkey, AFP reports.

“Sunday’s pre-dawn assault marked the fourth straight day ISIS had attacked the Syrian side of the border crossing as the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters prepared to head for Kobani,” wrote the wire report, citing the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The group also confirmed that 815 people have been killed in the fighting for Kobani in just over a month – more than half of whom were Islamic State fighters. An estimated 21 of them were civilians.

The U.S. military carried out five airstrikes near Kobani on Saturday and Sunday, in an ongoing series of attacks aimed at defending Kobani from the sky.

Fighting Breaks Out in Lebanon’s North as the Lebanese Army Battles Islamists

Lebanese soldiers fought Islamist gunmen across northern Lebanon for a third day in a row, Reuters reports. The violence linked to neighboring Syria is the worst fighting seen since Islamist militants seized the border town of Arsal this summer.

The affiliations of all the fighters was unclear, but security sources said they included both Lebanese and Syrian affiliates or supporters of ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra.

The fighting briefly spread to Arsal, a town in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, where fighting between the army and Jabhat al-Nusra killed 20 Lebanese soldiers in August. The jihadi group subsequently kidnapped and beheaded members of the Lebanese army.

The Lebanese army is facing intensified pressure to crack down on the militants after months of protests.

Jabhat al-Nusra has threatened to behead another captive soldier if the Lebanese army did not stop what they called attacks on Sunnis, the New York Times reports. The group has previously demanded that in return for the release of its prisoners, Shiite militant group Hezbollah end its intervention in Syria.

Tripoli is divided along sectarian lines between opponents and supporters of the Syrian government. Many Syrian rebels and Lebanese Sunni Islamists accuse the Lebanese army of working with the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah, which has the support of the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a member of the Alawite minority.

Lebanon said last week that it will ask the U.N. to stop registering refugees from Syria. As fighting escalated between the Lebanese army and Syrian militants, there were a rash of revenge attacks on Syrian refugees, including setting refugee tents on fire.

Recommended Reading:

• Foreign Affairs: Staying Out of Syria

• New York Times: The Horror Before the Beheadings

• Guardian: Life in Aleppo’s Ruins

• CBS News: Republican Lawmaker Sees a Need for U.S. Special Forces in Syria

• National: From Dumb Bombs to Precision Weapons, Assad Ramps Up Airstrikes on Rebels

• Los Angeles Times: U.S. Again Turns to Syria’s FSA Rebels, Despite Known Problems

• Wall Street Journal: Turkey, Syria: Complexity Increases

• RTE: Syrian Regime Strikes Kill 11 Children, Says Rights Group