MOSCOW, November 19 (Sputnik) — The US-led anti-IS coalition has not provided the Kurdish fighters with the heavy weapons needed to make a decisive victory over the Islamic State (IS), the President of Iraq's Kurdistan region Masoud Barzani said Wednesday in an interview with France24.
"The heavy weapons systems that we need, especially in terms of the quality and quantity, for example the APCs [armoured personnel carriers], the helicopters, the artillery we need for a decisive war against them – we have not received these types of weapons," Barzani told France24.
Barzani added that he did not have any answers, only questions as to why the Kurdish fighters were not given the requested support.
"Is there a ceiling on the heavy weapons systems that we should receive in terms of the quantity and quality? The answer is not very clear to us," Barzani said.
The president of Iraq's Kurdistan region nonetheless thanked the French President Francois Hollande for his historical visit to Iraq earlier in September. Barzani also praised the efforts of the US-led coalition's airstrikes in weakening the IS.
The Kurdish fighters, known as the peshmerga, have been fighting the IS over control of the Syrian border town Kobani since the beginning of fall. In recent days, neither side has made any significant advancements.
According to a Sunday report by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 1,000 people have been killed in the battle for Kobani, among them 27 Kurdish civilians.
The IS extremist militant group has fought the Syrian government since 2012. It then extended its attacks to northern and western Iraq in June 2014 and declared an Islamic caliphate on the territories under its control. The US-led international coalition has been carrying out air strikes on IS targets since September.
