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| Iraq |
| IS militants' surprise blitz kills 24 Kurd peshmergas |
| 2015-01-12 |
| [ARABNEWS] 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.... Death Eaters have killed at least 24 members of the Kurdish security forces in a surprise attack in northern Iraq, Kurdish officials said, in one of the deadliest single battles for the Kurds since last summer. Three Kurdish officers reported continued festivities with Islamic State on Sunday, one day after the deaths, near Gwer, a town some 40 km southwest of the autonomous Kurdish regions capital Irbil. Kurdish-controlled Gwer is likely to be a launch-pad for any future attempt by Iraqi and Kurdish forces to retake djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... , the biggest city in northern Iraq which Islamic State seized last June. Islamic State Death Eaters crossed the river Zab in small boats on Friday night and entered Gwer, but were driven back by Kurdish peshmerga forces, the officers said. Weve been engaged in fighting with them for the past two days, said one senior Kurdish officer on the Gwer frontline as the sound of gunfire rattled in the background. The officer, who asked to remain anonymous, said around 60 Death Eaters in total had been killed and that by intercepting the frequency they used to communicate via walkie talkie and listening in, it appeared many more were maimed. Both he and another officer blamed the Iraqi army for allowing the Death Eaters to reach Gwer. They accused Iraqi soldiers of abandoning a forward position when they came under attack, leaving the town exposed. The peshmerga launched a ground offensive to drive IS Death Eaters out of the Gwer area in late December, retaking several villages with the help of coalition Islamic State said on Friday it had launched a counter-attack against the peshmerga with a range of weapons including TOW missiles and rockets, killing dozens, including a senior officer. More than 750 peshmerga have been killed in combat since Islamic State overran their defenses in northern Iraq last summer, prompting the first |
| Posted by:Fred |