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Arbil (Iraq) (AFP) - Heavily armed Kurdish peshmerga fighters set off from their base in northern Iraq Tuesday to support militia forces defending the Syrian border town of Kobane from the Islamic State group.

Military trucks loaded with weapons departed from the base northeast of the Iraqi Kurdish regional capital Arbil bound for the besieged town on the Turkish frontier, an AFP correspondent said.

More than three dozen vehicles carrying 80 fighters, machineguns and artillery were to travel overland to Kobane, crossing the border into Turkey on Tuesday, a Kurdish officer said.

The convoy included two towed artillery pieces and a number of covered trucks, some of them carrying rocket launchers.

Another 72 peshmerga fighters were to fly to Turkey early on Wednesday, the officer said.

Kobane's Kurdish defenders have been waiting for days for the arrival of the peshmerga fighters, after Turkey last week said it would allow them to traverse its territory to enter the town.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said there would no problem for the peshmerga to cross into Kobane, dismissing reports of delays imposed by Ankara.

"There is now no political problem. There is no problem in the way of them crossing. They can cross at any moment," Cavusoglu was quoted as saying by the official Anatolia news agency.

Local Kurdish militia have been holding out against an IS offensive for weeks and the town has become an important symbol in the international battle against IS.

The fighting continued on Tuesday, an AFP reporter at Mursitpinar across the border in Turkey said, with black smoke rising over the town as the jihadists set fire to tyres in a bid to prevent air strikes.

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Iraq Kurd fighters leave base for Syria deployment