The approval came as Turkey criticised US air drops of ammunition and weapons to Kobane's Kurdish defenders, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan saying some of the deliveries had fallen into the wrong hands.

Backed by air strikes from a US-led coalition, Kurdish militia have been defending Kobane against a fierce IS offensive for more than a month.

The town on the Turkish border has become a crucial battleground in the fight against IS, an extremist Sunni Muslim group that has seized control of large parts of Syria and Iraq.

Turkey said this week it would allow Iraqi Kurd peshmerga fighters to travel to the town to relieve Kobane's defenders and on Wednesday the Iraqi region's parliament approved the move.

"The Kurdistan parliament decided to send forces to Kobane with the aim of supporting the fighters there and protecting Kobane," speaker Yusef Mohammed Sadeq said.

It was not immediately clear how many peshmerga fighters would be deployed or when they might be expected to arrive in Kobane.

Iraqi Kurdistan has its own security forces, government, borders and flag, and its forces have played a leading role in northern Iraq in combatting IS.

- Air drops in 'wrong' hands -

After initially losing ground to the jihadists in Kobane, the Kurds have fought back hard, with the US military saying Tuesday they had halted the IS advance and remained in control of most of Kobane.

They were given a boost this week by the first US air drop of weapons and other supplies, though one of the 27 parachuted bundles was reported to have fallen into jihadist hands, with an IS video showing a masked fighter opening wooden boxes filled with rockets and grenades.

Erdogan said some of the weapons had ended up with IS jihadists and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) -- a Syrian Kurdish group that Ankara does not support.

Ankara sees the PYD as the Syrian arm of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) whose battle for self-rule in Turkey's southeast has left 40,000 people dead over three decades.

"It has become clear that this was wrong," Erdogan said.

"Some of the air drops have fallen into the hands of the PYD and ISIS," he said, using a different name for IS. "It's impossible to achieve results with such an operation."

Fighting continued in Kobane on Wednesday, with at least six US-led air strikes reported to have hit IS positions.

An AFP reporter across the border in Turkey said heavy fighting broke out in the early evening in parts of the city, in what appeared to be a new IS offensive.

IS fighters are reported to have suffered heavy losses in Kobane, especially after the coalition dramatically increased strikes on their positions last week.

Most of the coalition raids have focused on Iraq, and Washington said Wednesday that a dozen air strikes had helped fend off an assault by IS on the country's strategic Mosul dam.

"There was an offensive action by the enemy in the vicinity of Mosul dam, a combination of US air strikes and Iraqi forces were able to repel that," said Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steven Warren.

- Syria destroys 'IS warplanes' -

Syria meanwhile claimed to have destroyed two of three warplanes reportedly seized by IS fighters in the north of the country.

The jihadists were reported to have taken the three planes, believed to be MiG-21 and MiG-23 jets, from Syrian military airports now under IS control in the northern provinces of Aleppo and Raqa.

"The terrorists were flying three old planes but our aircraft immediately took off and destroyed two of them as they were landing. The third plane was hidden" by the jihadists, Information Minister Omran al-Zohbi was quoted as saying by state news agency SANA.

Zohbi downplayed the threat from the remaining plane, saying it was "unusable" and that Syrian forces would eventually track it down and destroy it.

The United States has formed a coalition of Western and Arab allies to battle IS, which has been accused of widespread atrocities including mass executions, beheadings, rape, torture and selling women and children into slavery.

IS has lured thousands of foreign fighters to its ranks and has a following among many disaffected Muslims, raisings fears of attacks in Western countries.

The Canadian parliament was locked down on Wednesday as police hunted a gunman who shot a soldier guarding a nearby war memorial then ran inside.

There was no immediate indication of the motive for the shooting, but Canada had on Tuesday raised its national security alert after a soldier run over by a suspected jihadist sympathiser died.