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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Kurdish forces in fresh push to capture Mosul from Islamic State |
| 2016-08-15 |
| [REUTERS] Kurdish Peshmerga forces launched a fresh attack on 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.... (IS) forces early on Sunday as part of a campaign to capture djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... , the myrmidons' de facto capital in Iraq, Kurdish officials said. The advance began after heavy shelling and air strikes by a United States-led coalition against IS forces, a Rooters correspondent reported from Wardak, 30 km (19 miles) southeast of Mosul. The snuffies fought back, firing mortars at the advancing troops and detonating at least two boom-mobiles. Clouds of black smoke rose from the area and dozens of civilians fled in the direction of the Peshmerga lines, brandishing white flags. A Peshmerga commander said 11 villages had been taken from the ultra-hardline Sunni snuffies as the troops headed to Gwer, the target of the operation, 40 km (25 miles)southeast of Mosul. Repairing the bridge that the snuffies destroyed in Gwer would allow the Peshmerga to open a new front around Mosul. The bridge crosses the Grand Zab river that flows into the Tigris. The Iraqi army and the Peshmerga forces of the Kurdish self-rule region are gradually taking up positions around Mosul, 400 km (250 miles) north of Baghdad. It was from Mosul's Grand Mosque in 2014 that Islamic State leader His Supreme Immensity, Caliph of the Faithful and Galactic Overlord, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ...formerly merely the head of ISIL and a veteran of the Bagram jailhouse. Looks like a new messiah to bajillions of Moslems, like just another dead-eyed mass murder to the rest of us... declared a "caliphate" spanning regions of Iraq and Syria. Mosul is the largest urban center under the myrmidons' control, and had a pre-war population of nearly 2 million. Its fall would mark the effective defeat of Islamic State in Iraq, according to Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who has said he aims to retake the city this year. The Iraqi army is trying to advance from the south. In July it captured the Qayyara airfield, 60 km (35 miles) south of Mosul, which will serve as the main staging post for the expected offensive. |
| Posted by:Fred |