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Iraq
Jihadists Besieged in Clinic in Iraq-Syria Border Town
2014-10-02
[AnNahar] Kurdish peshmerga forces on Wednesday were surrounding a clinic in Rabia where several 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 Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
jihadists had holed up after their group lost control of the town, officials said.

The peshmerga launched a major military push Tuesday on Rabia, which lies on the border between Iraq and Syria, and quickly controlled most of it.

But a small group of IS fighters took refuge in the town's clinic, leading to a standoff with the peshmerga who fear the building has been booby-trapped.

"There are 10-12 IS members inside the hospital. We don't want to attack because it might be booby-trapped," said a senior officer, adding that the peshmerga fully controlled the rest of Rabia.

"There have been fighters inside the clinic since yesterday and we are surrounding them," peshmerga front man Halgord Hekmat said.

"We are monitoring, waiting for them to come out or kill themselves, but we are not fighting them," he told Agence La Belle France-Presse.

The Kurdish troops, with air support from the U.S.-led international coalition against IS, launched an offensive on three fronts on Tuesday.

Besides Rabia, they also advanced on Zumar, but the center of that town north of the main jihadist hub of djinn-infested Mosul
... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
remained in IS control late Wednesday, Hekmat said.

The peshmerga, who have been receiving new military equipment from their Western allies, also pushed south of Kirkuk on Tuesday, ousting the jihadists from three villages before calling in strikes.
Posted by:trailing wife

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