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| Iraq |
| Iraq Kurdish Forces Retake Oil Field, Villages from IS |
| 2015-02-01 |
| [AnNahar] Iraqi Kurdish forces and police retook an oil field in Kirkuk province Saturday that was seized 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.... group overnight, and freed 24 workers who had been taken captive, officers said. "Peshmerga forces and police cleared the Khubbaz (oil) field a little while ago and were able to enter it after surrounding it for hours," police Brigadier General Sarhad Qader said of the fighting, adding that they also retook eight villages. IS had moved into the oil field Friday night and seized 24 workers, who were freed after they withdrew, peshmerga Major General Westa Rasul said. A police colonel said their liberation was delayed because of fears that the bunker where they were held had been rigged with explosives. During the fighting on Saturday, a sniper killed peshmerga Major General Hussein Mansur, Colonel Kawa Gharib said. A peshmerga major was also killed and four more fighters maimed when an explosives-rigged house blew up. Mansur was the second senior Kurdish officer to die in two days, after Brigadier General Shirko Rauf was killed Friday during a major IS attack in Kirkuk province. The U.S.-led anti-IS coalition carried out 10 air strikes in Kirkuk province from Friday to Saturday, hitting IS units and vehicles and buildings used by the jihadists. The bulk of Iraq's oil output comes from fields in the south, but the government is counting on production of 300,000 barrels per day from fields in Kirkuk in its 2015 budget, so any major loss of output would be damaging. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |