Iraqi Kurdish fighters are drawing up a strategy with Kobani’s local defenders ahead of their deployment to the border town, according to a Kurdish official.

The 150-strong force has been camping just inside Turkey since Oct. 29 as they prepare to join Syrian Kurds in resisting an Islamic State offensive to seize the town.

Ten Iraqi Kurdish fighters, known as the Peshmerga, crossed briefly into Kobani yesterday to discuss the mission before returning, said Mustafa Denktas, a member of the mayoral council of the Turkish frontier town of Suruc. “They will move in when they think it is the right time,” he said

Iraqi and local Kurdish forces will try to break the weeks- long siege by Islamic State, an al-Qaeda breakaway group that has captured large areas of Syria and Iraq since June. Kurdish fighters in the city have held off the militants with the help of a U.S.-led bombing campaign and airdrops of weapons and other supplies.

The capture of the town, known as Ayn al-Arab in Arabic, would give Islamic State control of more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) of uninterrupted territory along the border with Turkey.

The militants intensified their shelling of Kobani over the past two days, leading to delays in the Peshmerga deployment, Milliyet newspaper said today, without citing anyone. Islamic State snipers shot dead three members of a 50-man contingent of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army, or FSA, immediately after they crossed the border on foot from Turkey on Oct. 29, Milliyet said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Selcan Hacaoglu in Ankara at [email protected] To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alaa Shahine at [email protected] Jack Fairweather, Mark Williams