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Iraqi Kurds To Send Fighters To Kobani

Updated

Smoke and flames rise following an apparent U.S.-led coalition air strike on Kobani on October 22.
Smoke and flames rise following an apparent U.S.-led coalition air strike on Kobani on October 22.

The parliament of Iraq's Kurdish regional government has approved sending Kurdish fighters to the embattled Syrian town of Kobani.

Kurdish parliament speaker Yusef Muhammad Sadeq said the parliament on October 22 agreed to send Peshmerga fighters to help Kurds in Kobani who have been battling militants from the Islamic State (IS) extremist group for several weeks now.

It was not clear how many Peshmerga fighters would be sent or when they would go.

Iraqi Kurdish official Hemin Hawrami said on Twitter that the Peshmerga would be equipped with heavy weapons.

That would help the besieged defenders of Kobani, who say they need armor-piercing weapons to fight the better-armed IS militants.

Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on October 22 that it was wrong for the United States to air drop military supplies to Kurdish fighters defending Kobani.

Erdogan said in Ankara that the action was a mistake because some of the weapons were seized by Islamic State (IS) militants.

The Pentagon said the vast majority of the U.S. supplies dropped on October 19 were taken by Kurdish fighters.

The U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State group, which has seized swaths of territory across Iraq and Syria, continued on October 22 as air strikes killed about 25 of the militants near the northern Iraqi city of Baiji.

U.S. Central Command said it targeted the militant group, carrying out six strikes close to Kobani and 12 strikes near Iraq's Mosul Dam.

Iraqi Army sources said its tanks and armored vehicles also fought off an advance by Islamic State militants on the town of Amiriyat Fallujah, some 50 kilometers south of the city of Fallujah, in central Anbar Province.

In Baghdad, police and medics said two car bombings in the Iraqi capital killed at least 28 people on October 22.

One blast struck across the street from a hospital in the Shi'ite neighborhood of Sadr City, killing at least 10 and injuring 29.

The second explosion occurred near a petrol station in the central district of Karrada, killing at least 18 people and wounding 37.

Bomb attacks, including suicide car bombs, have intensified in Baghdad in recent days.

The IS group, which controls parts of the country, has claimed responsibility for some of them.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, and AP
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