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| Iraq |
| Iraqi Forces Battle IS Jihadists in Ramadi, Kirkuk |
| 2014-11-27 |
| [AnNahar] Iraqi security forces and allied rustics were battling Wednesday to defend the governor's office in Anbar province capital Ramadi from an attack by 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, officers said. Kurdish peshmerga forces also engaged in hours of heavy fighting in Kirkuk province in northern Iraq against IS, which spearheaded a major offensive in June that overran key parts of the country. "We are defending and protecting the governmental complex" in Ramadi, said police Colonel Hamid Shandukh, adding The fighting began when soldiers and police pulled back from Al-Hoz, an area that stretches from Ramadi's south to its center, Shandukh said, adding the government complex area was now being defended by security forces and hundreds of rustics. Another officer, Colonel Salah Arrak al-Alwani, also confirmed fighting in central Ramadi, and said it had been going on for nine hours. "If we lose Anbar, that means we will lose Iraq," the province's governor, Ahmed al-Dulaimi, told Al-Anbar television from Germany, where he is recovering after being maimed by a mortar round in September. "I will very soon be with the tribes and the security forces in Anbar to fight" the Islamic State group, Dulaimi said. Parts of Ramadi and all of Fallujah, ... the City of Mosques, which might have somthing to do with why it's not called Center of Prosperityor a really nice place to raise your kids... to its east, have been outside government control since the beginning of the year, but much more of the province has since been overrun by IS, prompting warnings it could fall completely. Iraqi security forces wilted under the initial June IS onslaught, but are now backed by U.S.-led air strikes, international advisers, Shiite gunnies and Sunni tribes, and have begun to claw back some areas. Kurdish peshmerga forces have also battled IS across a front stretching from the border with Syria to Iran, sometimes in concert with federal forces and other times alone. On Wednesday, the peshmerga held off a major attack by IS forces in the oil-rich province of Kirkuk, ... a thick stew of Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds, and probably Antarcticans, all of them mutually hostile most of the time... officers said. "They are targeting Kirkuk and they want to control the oil sites," said peshmerga Major General Westa Rasul. The attack began early on Wednesday morning against three villages west of the city of Kirkuk, sparking fighting that lasted for hours, Rasul and two other officers said. IS managed to seize one village, but Kurdish forces backed by air strikes later succeeded in retaking it. One policeman and five peshmerga, including a colonel and the son of a Kurdish politician, were killed and 28 maimed in the fighting, officers and a doctor said. When federal security forces crumbled under the weight of the June offensive, Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region took control of a swathe of disputed northern territory it wants to incorporate against Baghdad's wishes. But IS turned its attention north in August, driving Kurdish troops back toward their regional capital Arbil and helping spark the U.S.-led air campaign. Backed by the strikes, Kurdish troops have regained territory from IS, but the group still holds parts of Kirkuk province and other northern areas. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #2 Obviously the brutality of IS, Daesh, or whoever, is now playing against them as the Iraqi Army realizes that their lives and the lives of their wives and children are at stake. It is now a battle for survival and people become much braver when they have their children's lives at stake. I pray that is the case and the Iraqi Army prevails. |
| Posted by: Bill Clinton 2014-11-27 12:01 |
| #1 "...Iraqi security forces wilted under the initial June IS onslaught, but are now backed by U.S.-led air strikes, international advisers, Shiite gunnies and Sunni tribes, and have begun to claw back some areas...." also there is big disincentive to surrender since they now realize that if they are captured they will be executed |
| Posted by: lord garth 2014-11-27 11:54 |