[Al Ahram] Bombs killed 13 members of the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces during an operation against the Islamic State...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
jihadist group in the northern province of Kirkuk on Friday, officers said.
"The aim (of the operation) is to secure the Baghdad-Kirkuk road and the centre of the Daquq district and to end activity by (IS) members," said Mohammed Mustafa Hama, a brigadier general in the autonomous Kurdish region's peshmerga forces.
Hama said that roadside kabooms and explosives-rigged vehicles left by the jihadists killed 13 peshmerga and maimed 47 during the operation, figures confirmed by a second Kurdish brigadier general who declined to be identified by name.
The second officer said the operation was launched at dawn on Friday with support from international coalition aircraft, and had succeeded in retaking 10 villages from IS.
Kurdish forces also retook villages from IS in Kirkuk in a similar operation in late August.
IS overran large areas of Iraq in a devastating offensive in June 2014, sweeping security forces aside, and drove Kurdish forces back towards their regional capital that August.
A US-led coalition began carrying out air strikes against the jihadists and Kurdish forces have since pushed the jihadists back, as have Iraqi federal forces in other areas.
But much of western Iraq remains under IS control.
| Rudaw adds: |
He said the Peshmerga casualties were from ISIS snipers and buried landmines around the villages.
"We have two mobile hospitals with us there which treat the maimed," Abdulla said, adding that US military doctors were also involved in treating maimed Peshmerga of the Kurdistan Region.
The Peshmerga launched a three-pronged ground offensive to drive out ISIS gunnies from 13 villages on Friday morning. Abdullah said at least two of them, Talrabaa and Albu Muhammad, had been fully recaptured.
A statement issued by the US-led coalition forces said Thursday that 28 rounds of
... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
, Ramadi and other Iraqi areas, destroying "technical units and vehicles" belonging to ISIS.