Friday, November 13, 2015
Iraqi autonomous Kurdish region’s peshmerga forces and fighters from the Yazidi minority, a local Kurdish-speaking community which ISIS had targeted in the area, enter the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, in the Nineveh Province, on November 13, 2015. AFP PHOTO / SAFIN HAMED
Kurdish forces backed by U.S. airstrikes seized the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar from ISIS on Friday, a Reuters witness said, in one of the most significant counter-attacks since the militants swept through the north last year.
“ISIL defeated and on the run,” the Kurdistan regional security council said in a tweet, using another name for ISIS. It said Kurdish peshmerga forces, which led the operation, had secured Sinjar’s wheat silo, cement factory, hospital and several other public buildings.
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Thursday, November 12, 2015
Peshmerga forces are trying to break militants’ ability to move fighters and supplies between Iraq and Syria
Iraqi Kurdish forces on Thursday launched a major operation against the Islamic State group in the town of Sinjar, which lies on a key supply line for the jihadists, a senior officer said.
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Dozens of people have been killed in Lebanon’s worst terrorist attack this year after a double suicide bombing in south Beirut upended a fragile peace.
The health ministry said 43 people had died and 239 had been wounded in the twin blasts on Thursday, which targeted the Shia-majority district of Burj al-Barajneh. It was the first major suicide bombing to strike the country since a similar attack in January that targeted an Alawite area in the northern city of Tripoli. The number of casualties is likely to rise due to the severity of the attack.
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Russian-backed militants violate truce 21 times.
One Ukrainian soldier was killed in the past 24 hours, and five others were wounded, according to Ukraine’s presidential military spokesman Andriy Lysenko.
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At least 16 soldiers of the army loyal to Tobruk government were killed and another 11 wounded in clashes in Benghazi with parliament forces of the rival government in Tripoli Wednesday, security personnel told EFE.
Four militias belonging to rival Islamist groups Majlis al Shura and Zwara Benghazi, with links to Tripoli, died in the fighting in Boatni in which fighter jets loyal to Tobruk also participated.
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