Iraqi Prime Minister orders Air Force to back Kurds fighting Islamists
Written by : Mohamed Abdel Fattah
Aug 04, 2014
Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has called upon his country's armed forces to help Kurdish forces battle a Sunni militant offensive in northern Iraq.
Kurdish forces known as Peshmerga struggling against an advance by Sunni militants in the country's northwest, as fighting raged after militants seized several towns,sending thousands of people fleeing to the nearby mountains and threatening the country’s largest dam.
Maliki, who remains in office after an inconclusive election in April, has been accused of stoking tensions with the Sunnis by pursuing a sectarian agenda. He has commanded the air force to provide aerial support to the Kurds in the first such pledge of air power to the semi-autonomous government in the Kurdish region of Iraq since Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, was captured by the militants on June 10.
Army spokesman Qassem Atta said in a statement carried by state television that the air force and army aviation were ordered "to provide air support to Peshmerga forces."
The cooperation between the two militaries comes after slamic State fighters seized control of Iraq's biggest dam, an oilfield and three more towns on Sunday after inflicting their first major defeat on Kurdish forces since sweeping through the region last month.
Jihadist fighters captured three northern Iraqi towns, Zumar Sinjar, Wana .The majority of the people from the town of Sinjar are from the Yazidi minority ethnic Kurd origins.
There are about 600,000 Yazidis remaining in Iraq with roughly 80 percent of them living in the towns of Sinjar and Bashika in Nineveh province.
ISIS militants have successfully captured an oil field close to the Iraqi town of Zumar after fighting with Kurdish forces who had control of the area.
Zumar is a small Kurdish-majority outpost northwest of Mosul, which used to be under federal government control but was taken over by the Peshmerga in June.
Later on Sunday, the militants captured Wana, a strategic town near the Tigris River putting them within striking distance of the Mosul Dam, the country’s largest and an important supplier of electricity and water. The dam is on the Tigris River about 30 miles northwest of Mosul.
Capture of the Mosul Dam could give the Sunni militants the ability to flood major Iraqi cities.
The territorial gains also quickly sparked a humanitarian crisis, local Iraqi and United Nations officials said, as thousands of families fled the northwestern towns and sought refugee in rugged mountains with no access to food or water.
Thousands flooded into the Kurdish provinces of Erbil and Dohuk, humanitarian aid workers said, but the latest conditions of those stranded in the Sinjar mountains were difficult to assess.
ISIS, which swept through northern Iraq in June almost unopposed by the U.S.-trained army, poses the biggest challenge to the stability of Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Iraqi fighters abandoned their posts and weapons as ISIS fighters ransacked one province after another and in no time reached the outskirts of capital city, Baghdad.
The Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) changed its name earlier this year and declared a caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria. The group has already seized four oil fields, which help fund its operations.
Sources
nbcnews
abcnews.
online.wsj
Aug 04, 2014
Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has called upon his country's armed forces to help Kurdish forces battle a Sunni militant offensive in northern Iraq.
Kurdish forces known as Peshmerga struggling against an advance by Sunni militants in the country's northwest, as fighting raged after militants seized several towns,sending thousands of people fleeing to the nearby mountains and threatening the country’s largest dam.
Maliki, who remains in office after an inconclusive election in April, has been accused of stoking tensions with the Sunnis by pursuing a sectarian agenda. He has commanded the air force to provide aerial support to the Kurds in the first such pledge of air power to the semi-autonomous government in the Kurdish region of Iraq since Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, was captured by the militants on June 10.
Army spokesman Qassem Atta said in a statement carried by state television that the air force and army aviation were ordered "to provide air support to Peshmerga forces."
The cooperation between the two militaries comes after slamic State fighters seized control of Iraq's biggest dam, an oilfield and three more towns on Sunday after inflicting their first major defeat on Kurdish forces since sweeping through the region last month.
Jihadist fighters captured three northern Iraqi towns, Zumar Sinjar, Wana .The majority of the people from the town of Sinjar are from the Yazidi minority ethnic Kurd origins.
There are about 600,000 Yazidis remaining in Iraq with roughly 80 percent of them living in the towns of Sinjar and Bashika in Nineveh province.
ISIS militants have successfully captured an oil field close to the Iraqi town of Zumar after fighting with Kurdish forces who had control of the area.
Zumar is a small Kurdish-majority outpost northwest of Mosul, which used to be under federal government control but was taken over by the Peshmerga in June.
Later on Sunday, the militants captured Wana, a strategic town near the Tigris River putting them within striking distance of the Mosul Dam, the country’s largest and an important supplier of electricity and water. The dam is on the Tigris River about 30 miles northwest of Mosul.
Capture of the Mosul Dam could give the Sunni militants the ability to flood major Iraqi cities.
The territorial gains also quickly sparked a humanitarian crisis, local Iraqi and United Nations officials said, as thousands of families fled the northwestern towns and sought refugee in rugged mountains with no access to food or water.
Thousands flooded into the Kurdish provinces of Erbil and Dohuk, humanitarian aid workers said, but the latest conditions of those stranded in the Sinjar mountains were difficult to assess.
ISIS, which swept through northern Iraq in June almost unopposed by the U.S.-trained army, poses the biggest challenge to the stability of Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Iraqi fighters abandoned their posts and weapons as ISIS fighters ransacked one province after another and in no time reached the outskirts of capital city, Baghdad.
The Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) changed its name earlier this year and declared a caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria. The group has already seized four oil fields, which help fund its operations.
Sources
nbcnews
abcnews.
online.wsj
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