SANLIURFA, Turkey
A plane departed from Turkey for northern Iraq on Friday, carrying the second batch of Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga troops that fought against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant militants in the Syrian border town of Kobani.
The group had entered Turkey in a convoy of seven minibuses. It was later airlifted by private jet and will land in the capital of the Kurdish region in Iraq, Erbil.
Turkish forces tightened security around Sanliurfa Airport in the southeastern part of the country, where the plane took off.
Earlier on Friday, a third group of peshmerga fighters arrived in Kobani from the capital Erbil, via the Suruc district of the Sanliurfa province.
The third group, consisting of 150 troops, replaced the second departing one.
Peshmerga troops have been fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, in Kobani, also known as Ayn al-Arab, which is located a few kilometers from Turkey’s southern border.
The first group, also composed of 150 peshmerga fighters, was sent to Kobani in October 2014, and was later replaced in December by a second group.
This move was a reaction to ISIL militants capturing numerous villages surrounding Kurdish-populated Kobani mid-September.
Clashes between the Syrian Kurdish fighters and ISIL forced around 200,000 people to take shelter in Turkey in late 2014.
