A convoy of Iraqi Kurdish forces in Turkey rolled late on Friday towards the frontier with Syria to help Syrian Kurds defend the besieged town of Kobani, which has become the focus of the global war against Islamic State militants.
Iraqi Kurdish fighters, known as peshmerga or "those who defy death", set off cheering and making victory signs in more than a dozen trucks and jeeps, accompanied by armoured vehicles and artillery. They headed from a holding point around 8 km (5 miles) from the border towards Kobani.
The force numbers only around 150 but brings weapons and ammunition. Their arrival would mark the first time Turkey has allowed ground troops from outside Syria to reinforce Syrian Kurds, who have been defending the town for more than 40 days.
US led air strikes hit Islamic State positions in Kobani earlier on Friday in an apparent bid to pave the way for the heavily-armed peshmerga forces to enter.
As the peshmerga headed towards the border, a loud blast was heard in the Kobani area, the latest in a series of explosions within the last hour, in an apparent intensification of the fighting.
Despite having limited strategic significance, Kobani has become a powerful symbol in the battle against the Sunni Muslim insurgents, who have captured expanses of Iraq and Syria and declared an Islamic "caliphate".
The Kobani battle has raged in full view of the Turkish frontier, testing whether a US led coalition can halt Islamic State's advance. The failure of Turkey to help defend the town sparked riots among Turkish Kurds in which 40 people died.
Islamic State fighters have killed or driven away Shi'ite Muslims, Christians and other communities who do not share their ultra-radical brand of Sunni Islam. They executed at least 220 Iraqi Sunnis in retaliation against opposition to their takeover of territory west of Baghdad this week.
Earlier, machinegun fire could be heard from the Turkish side of the border as Islamic State fighters pounded the area near where the peshmerga were expected to cross.
MASSACRE
In Iraq, government forces and Kurds have made gains against Islamic State in the north in recent weeks, but the US air strikes have failed to stop the militants from advancing in Anbar province, a vast western region straddling the Euphrates river valley from the Syrian border to Baghdad's outskirts.
This week's execution of more than 220 tribesmen who resisted Islamic State's advance in the Euphrates valley appears to be the worst mass killing of fellow Sunnis by a group previously known for massacring Shi'ites and non-Muslims.
At least 220 bodies of men from the Albu Nimr tribe, seized by Islamic State days earlier, were found in mass graves in recent days. They had been shot at close range.
Many of Iraq's Sunnis supported Islamic State as it advanced through the country, seeing the fighters as protectors from the Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad.
Washington hopes that tribes can be persuaded to switch sides and help the Baghdad government fight the militants, as they did in Anbar during the 2006-2007 "surge" campaign, the bloodiest phase of the US occupation of Iraq. But so far, tribes that resist Islamic State have faced harsh retribution while complaining of scant support from Baghdad.
Iraq's most senior Shi'ite cleric called on the government on Friday to rush to their aid.
"What is required from the Iraqi government is to offer quick support to the sons of this tribe and other tribes that are fighting Daesh (Islamic State) terrorists," Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani said, in an address read out by an aide in the holy city of Kerbala after Friday prayers.
"This will offer the opportunity to the other tribes to join the fighters against Daesh," said the message from the reclusive 84-year-old cleric, whose pronouncements are seen by Shi'ites in Iraq and beyond as having the force of law.
Sheikh Naeem al-Ga'oud, a leader of the Albu Nimr, told Reuters he feared many more tribesmen would be rounded up, shot and dumped in mass graves. He said his tribe had pleaded to the government for help in the days before its village fell to an Islamic State onslaught.
"A day before the attack we told them (the government) that we will be targeted by the Islamic State. I talked to the commander of the air force, with several commanders," he told Reuters in an interview. "We gave them the coordinates of the places where they were, but nobody listened to us."
The US State Department said it was deeply concerned by reports of the masss executions. Islamic State's "indiscriminate crimes prove, yet again, that it is targeting all Iraqis, regardless of faith or religion," it said.
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