MOSCOW, October 14 (RIA Novosti) - Despite claims that Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has provided military aid to Syrian Kurdish forces fighting the Islamic State (IS) in Kobani, locals say they have received nothing so far, the World Bulletin reported Tuesday.
"We haven't received a single bullet," Esmat Al-Sheikh, head of Kobani's defense council was quoted as saying by the World Bulletin.
While one Syrian Kurdish official said the KRG had sent a "symbolic" arms shipment currently stalled in northeast Syria, the official, Hamid Darbandi said, "We helped them in roughly every arena. We sent them aid, including military," the newspaper reported.
A spokesman for the Syrian Kurdish military council claimed that the aid in question, including light weapons ammunition and mortar shells, is stuck in a Kurdish-controlled region of northeastern Syria, the World Bulletin reported. Officials have stated the military aid has not reached Kobani because Turkey would not open the transit corridor to allow the reinforcement of Syrian Kurds.
An Iraqi Kurdish official who wished to remain anonymous, stated that shipments to the region began and "has made some difference," the newspaper reported. The official added that the government had plans to send more military aid to Kobani.
At the end of September, Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) head Salih Muslim made a distress call claiming that IS militants were likely to slaughter the besieged residents of Kobani, one of the largest towns in the Kurdish region of Syria bordering Turkey, unless the group received military aid.
The IS, a Sunni jihadist group that has seized vast areas in Iraq and Syria, has besieged Kobani for the past few weeks. Some 400 people have died in clashes between IS and Kurdish fighters in Kobani, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The extremist group announced in June the establishment of an Islamic caliphate over its captured territories.
