As well as being posted online Saturday, the letter was sent on Thursday to the preparatory committee for a Kurdish National Conference to be held later this month in Arbil – located in the far north of Iraqi Kurdistan.
The statement referred to the area of Syria where Kurds live as ‘Western Kurdistan.’ The Kurdish people are spread over adjoining parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran, and are the largest ethnic group in the world without their own state.
Iraqi Kurds have already sent food, medical supplies, and fuel to their Kurdish brethren in Syria but Barzani’s statement is the first time that intervention has been suggested.
There were unconfirmed reports of a massacre earlier this week, in which 450 Kurds were allegedly murdered by Al-Qaeda-linked rebels. According to IranianTV channel Al-Alam, militants from the Jabat Al-Nusra Front attacked the town of Tal Abyad near the Turkish border on Monday, killing 120 children and 330 women. Neither the Syrian government nor the Syrian opposition has confirmed the report.