large areaof Sinjar
...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....
bad boys.
Iraqi Kurdish leader
Massoud Barzani... hereditary head of the Kurdish Democratic Party, maybe a little too close to the Medes and the Persians for most people's tastes...
claimed large Peshmerga advances during a visit to nearby Mount Sinjar.
The town, near the Syrian border has been controlled by Islamic State (IS) snuffies since August.
Kurdish Peshmerga fighters backed by US-led air strikes launched a counter-offensive in the area last week.
IS controls a swathe of Iraq and Syria, where it has declared a caliphate.
The US said it launched 13 air strikes in Iraq on Sunday, four of which were on IS targets near Sinjar.
The US, Iraq and other Western and Arab countries have formed a coalition against the bad boy group and began air strikes in August.
'Siege broken'
Massoud Barzani praised the progress Peshmerga troops had made when he visited Mount Sinjar on Sunday.