Militia linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought the government of neighbouring Turkey for decades, were clearing pockets of resistance of the al Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, al-Nusra Front, and Ahrar al-Sham in the border town of Yarubiya, Syrian opposition sources said.
"The Kurds are now in control of the Yarubiya border post. They now have a clear route to market the region's oil, which should belong to all Syrians. Thousands of the Arabs have fled," said Yasser Farhan, a member of the opposition Syrian National Coalition.
The northeastern province of Hasakah, which borders Iraq and Turkey, has a population of over one million, 70 percent Kurd and 30 percent Arab. The fighting there deepens sectarian and ethnic faultlines in Syria and threatens to draw neighbouring powers into the country's civil war.
A statement by the Syrian National Coalition said Iraqi ground forces attacked Yarubiya on Saturday in coordination with the Kurdish militia. Syrian rebel sources said Syrian warplanes had also bombarded the town.
"The Iraqi government has committed a grave error by its unprecedented interference in Syrian affairs," the statement said, adding that the Shi'ite-dominated Storied Baghdad
...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate...
government had been aiding the transfer to Syria of Iraqi Shi'ite militia who are fighting alongside
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Horror of Homs...
's forces.
An Iraqi security official denied involvement in the capture of Yarubiya. "The last thing we need is to get dragged into a military combat inside Syria. We will not engage in any way," he said.
Other Iraqi officials said some maimed Kurdish fighters had been evacuated in Iraqi army Humvees and taken to areas under the control of Iraqi Kurdish fighters, then over the border into Iraq.
Rami Abdelrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, said Kurdish fighters had taken over 90 percent of Yarubiya town.
Video footage released by the group showed Kurdish fighters manning a tower at the crossing and others carrying the flag of the Kurdistan People's Protection Units militia.