Some 80 Peshmerga fighters stopped off late Wednesday at the Demirol motorway services restaurant just outside the city of Sanliurfa – and left a bill amounting to $473.

They came, they saw and they left, purportedly, without paying the bill.

Amid confusion over the plans of the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters set to cross from Turkey to fight militants in Kobane, one contingent ate a full meal in a Turkish restaurant without paying the hefty bill, the Hurriyet daily reported Friday, according to Agence France-Presse.

Some 80 Peshmerga fighters stopped off late Wednesday at the Demirol motorway services restaurant just outside the city of Sanliurfa as they travelled from Iraq through Turkey to the border with Syria.

Enjoying the spicy local specialty of Urfa Kebab, as well as soup, beans and rice, the party of 80 worked up a bill of 1,040 Turkish lira ($473).

“The Peshmerga group left the restaurant without paying. So far there has been no sign of payment,” a restaurant source, who was not named, told Hurriyet.

“But we have kept the bills. And we are waiting for the payment,” the source added.

The paper later quoted one of the partners in the restaurant, Bekir Demirol, as saying that there had been a “misunderstanding”, and the bill was subsequently paid by the office of the Sanliurfa province governor.

“I looked today and the payment has arrived,” he told the paper.

However, contacted by the Hurriyet, the governor’s office said it had made no payment and was not aware of receiving a bill.

The Peshmerga are supposed to cross into Syria to reinforce Syrian Kurdish fighters battling militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) for control of the mainly Kurdish Syrian town of Kobane.

 
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