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IRAQ WARS
IS siege of Mount Sinjar broken: Iraqi Kurd official
by Staff Writers
Fishkhabur, Iraq (AFP) Dec 18, 2014


Iraq jihadists behead man on sorcery charges
Baghdad (AFP) Dec 18, 2014 - The Islamic State group on Thursday beheaded a man publicly on charges that he was a "sorcerer", north of their bastion of Tikrit, the jihadist organisation and residents said.

The group released pictures of the execution on a square in Nahyat al-Alam, a town a few kilometres north of Tikrit.

One picture showed what the IS statement called "talismans" found in the victim's possession but appear to be nothing more than prayer beads and a green Shiite banner.

Some residents who spoke to AFP said the executed man was a Sunni who had recently joined the police in Samarra, a town further south which is under government control.

But a Kirkuk-based cleric who knew the victim said he was a Sufi leader with a following in the Naqshbandiya brotherhood, whose main power base has always been in the Tikrit area.

The shadowy organisation, led by senior officials of the former Baath regime, joined forces with the jihadists when they swept across Iraq's Sunni heartland in June.

The Naqshbandiya's adherence to mystical Sufi practices clashes with the traditionalist interpretation of Islam IS claims to follow.

The executioner was identified by some local sources as a top IS operative for the central Salaheddin province, of which Samarra and Tikrit are both part.

On Monday, IS militants executed 13 men described as members of the "Knights of Al-Alam" -- an anti-jihadist Sunni tribal group -- on a roundabout between Tikrit and Nahyat al-Alam.

Several IS leaders in Iraq killed in air strikes: US official
Washington (AFP) Dec 18, 2014 - Several leaders of the Islamic State group have been killed in US air strikes in northern Iraq in recent weeks, a US defense official said Thursday.

"These were the result of a series of air strikes this month carried out over the course of several days," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"We've long said that command and control, including leadership, remain valid targets."

The strikes were "part of degrading ISIL's ability to conduct command and control" of their forces, the official said, using an alternative acronym for the group.

The official said the operation was "not insignificant," and reflected a wider effort to pile pressure on the group as Iraqi forces prepare for a major counteroffensive in the coming months.

The jihadist leaders who were killed did not include the chief of the extremist group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the official added.

The Wall Street Journal first reported that US forces had taken out several key leaders, quoting the military's top officer, General Martin Dempsey.

"These are high-value targets, senior leadership," Dempsey told the Journal.

The newspaper, quoting unnamed officials, said between December 3 to December 9, air raids killed a man known as Abd al-Basit, the head of the group's military operations in Iraq, and Haji Mutazz, a deputy to Baghdadi, the IS chief.

A third figure, Radwin Talib, the IS group's leader overseeing the city of Mosul, was killed in a strike in late November, the Journal reported.

A broad peshmerga operation backed by US-led air strikes broke the Islamic State group's weeks-old siege of Iraq's Mount Sinjar on Thursday, a top Iraqi Kurdistan security official said.

"Peshmerga forces have reached Mount Sinjar, the siege on the mountain has been lifted," Masrour Barzani, the chancellor of the Kurdistan Regional Security Council, told reporters from an operations centre near the border with Syria.

A Yazidi leader atop the mountain however said he could see no sign of a military deployment and a peshmerga commander explained that any evacuation would only begin on Friday.

A statement from Barzani's office said the operation launched by the peshmerga on Wednesday morning had been one of the most successful so far against the Islamic State (IS) group.

It said the siege was broken at 1530 GMT and was the conclusion of an operation involving 8,000 peshmerga forces.

"This operation represents the single biggest military offensive against IS and the most successful," the statement said.

It also said that, as a result, jihadist fighters had fled en masse towards strongholds such as Tall Afar and Mosul, Iraq's second city and the main IS hub in northern Iraq.

Barzani told reporters the peshmerga push had cut key supply lines used by IS and reclaimed a total of 700 square kilometres (270 square miles) during the past two days.

A devastating jihadist attack on the Yazidi minority's Sinjar heartland in August displaced tens of thousands of people and was one of the reasons put forward by US President Barack Obama for launching strikes four months ago.

- 'Corridor secured' -

Amid fears of a genocide against the small Kurdish-speaking minority, tens of thousands of Yazidis fled to the mountain and remained trapped there in the searing summer heat with no supplies.

Kurdish fighters, mostly Syrian, broke that first siege but remaining anti-IS forces were subsequently unable to hold positions in the plains and retreated back to the mountain in late September.

The peshmerga commander for the area said troops had reached the mountain and secured a road that would enable people to leave, effectively breaking the siege.

"Tomorrow most of the people will come down from the mountain," Mohamed Kojar told AFP by phone, explaining the offensive had secured a corridor northeast of the mountain.

Dawood Jundi, a peshmerga field commander based on the mountain, also said the road had been secured but said some pockets of IS presence near the peshmerga advance remained to be cleared.

Said Hassan Said, a Yazidi politician also based on the mountain, for his part said he could see no sign that the siege had been broken.

"I'm on top of the mountain right now, I can see all areas from my position," he said. "There are no clashes, no movements, there is no deployment of peshmerga I can see."

Said put the number of families on the mountain at 1,200 and stressed they were surviving on fast dwindling supplies.

Speaking to reporters near the Fishkhabur border crossing with Syria, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) northwest of the mountain, Barzani said the operation had a key road used by IS fighters east of their main Iraqi hub of Mosul.


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IRAQ WARS
Iraq Kurds, coalition jets in major push to retake Sinjar
Arbil, Iraq (AFP) Dec 17, 2014
Iraqi Kurdish forces on Wednesday launched a broad offensive backed by mass bombing from US-led coalition warplanes to retake the northeastern Sinjar area from the Islamic State group. In neighbouring Syria, the bodies of 230 people from a tribe that rose up against the jihadists in the Deir Ezzor region have been found in a mass grave, a monitoring group said. Sixty-one air strikes were ... read more


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