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A Kurdish peshmerga soldier who was wounded Sept. 30 in fierce battles in nearby Nineveh province with Islamic State group militants is brought to the Zakho Emergency Hospital in Dahuk, Iraq. Hadi Mizban/The Associated Press hide caption

A Kurdish peshmerga soldier who was wounded Sept. 30 in fierce battles in nearby Nineveh province with Islamic State group militants is brought to the Zakho Emergency Hospital in Dahuk, Iraq.

Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq captured a border crossing with Syria on Tuesday, expelling Islamic State militants in heavy fighting that ground down to vicious house-to-house combat and close-quarters sniping.

In neighboring Syria, Kurdish militiamen were on the defensive as the extremists pressed ahead with a relentless assault on a town near the Turkish border. The attack on Kobani, also known as Ayn Arab, has driven more than 160,000 people across the frontier in the past few days.

Kurdish fighters man a weapon mounted on a pickup truck as they take position behind cement blocks Aug. 29 in the Iraqi city of Rabia on the Iraqi-Syrian border, where clashes with Islamic State militants were taking place. A month later on Sept. 30, Kurdish forces finally were able to retake the city. Reuters /Landov hide caption

Kurdish fighters man a weapon mounted on a pickup truck as they take position behind cement blocks Aug. 29 in the Iraqi city of Rabia on the Iraqi-Syrian border, where clashes with Islamic State militants were taking place. A month later on Sept. 30, Kurdish forces finally were able to retake the city.

Iraqi Kurdish fighters, known as peshmerga, were doing the bulk of the fighting on the ground as a U.S.-led coalition carried out an aerial assault against the Islamic State group in both Iraq and Syria. Britain joined the air campaign Tuesday, carrying out its first strikes against the extremists in Iraq though it does not plan to expand into Syria.

On Tuesday, Kurdish fighters in Iraq said they saw some of the heaviest fighting yet. Peshmerga spokesman Halgurd Hekmat told The Associated Press the Kurds seized the border crossing of Rabia, which the extremists captured in their blitz across Iraq over the summer.

Rami Abdurrahman, the director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, also said the Kurds had retaken the border post. He said Syrian Kurdish militiamen, who control the Syrian side of the frontier, had helped in the fight.

Kurds wounded in the fighting were brought to a makeshift clinic in the town of Salhiyah, where dusty and exhausted, they described savage battles, with militants sniping at them from inside homes and from the windows of a hospital in Rabia.

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Kurds Retake Syria-Iraq Border Crossing As U.K. Begins Bombing

University of Colorado Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano, right, hands Ako M. Wahbi, of the Zheen Archive Center, a disk containing digital copies of captured Iraqi Secret Police files. (Mark Leffingwell, Daily Camera)

BOULDER A Kurdish delegation in Colorado retrieving cached documents detailing Iraqi persecution say Kurdish fighters can provide the increasingly sought ground force to defeat the Islamic State because this will help Kurds gain independence and be "the next Israel."

But battle-hardened Kurdish forces, credited with gains in Syria, need better weapons like night vision, artillery, anti-tank, delegation members said Tuesday.

And U.S. officials must realize that trying to keep semi-autonomous Kurdish Iraq as part of a united Iraq ultimately "will fail," said Woshiar Rasul, an adviser to the governor in Kurds' main city Sulaymaniyah.

Kurdish leaders since the 1970s have accepted limited autonomy but even within Iraq's latest coalition government "there is no full trust," Rasul said.

"We've acted exactly according to what the United States requested. We've remained in Iraq," he said. Yet, for nine months, Iraqi officials in Baghdad haven't even paid salaries of Kurdish participants in the government, Rasul said.

The U.S. government's insistence on a unified Iraq is understandable, said Ako Wahbi, owner of a contracting firm and leader of Kurdish efforts to build up history archives for museums.

"You came to the Middle East. You spent a lot of money and lives of your young soldiers. And the outcome is not what you tried to do," Wahbi said.

But even if Kurds stay temporarily as part of Iraq "there will be another conflict," he said, adding that Iraq's Sunni and Shia factions "hate each other more than they hate the Kurds."

A robust role repelling Islamic State militants "can give a good advantage for our future," Wahbi said. "Our only dream, up until now, is a Kurdistan independent state."

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Iraq Kurds collect history at CU, want 'new Israel' Kurdistan

Wehrey on Ending Libya #39;s Civil War
With a domestic landscape torn apart by competing claims to power and with interference from regional actors serving to entrench divides, restoring stability in Libya and building a unified...

By: CarnegieEndowment

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Wehrey on Ending Libya's Civil War - Video

Libya Shield Force members are seen near a building on fire. (Reuters)

Parliament, which was elected June 25 and is dominated by anti-Islamists, is recognised by the international community but contested by a coalition of militias that control Tripoli and by Islamists in the eastern city of Benghazi.

The talks were held in the far southwestern town of Ghadames, following marathon shuttle diplomacy by UN mission chief Bernardino Leon, and attended by representatives from Britain and Malta.

On Tuesday, however, the Fajr Libya (Libya Dawn) coalition in Tripoli denounced the dialogue in a statement and declared that it was continuing with its "military operations," without elaborating.

In the east, the "Shura of Benghazi Revolutionaries" comprising jihadist groups, among others, issued their own statement rejecting the initiative as "unfair".

For its part, the Dar al-Ifta, the country's highest religious authority, called for the "suspension" of the talks, and warned of the "dangerous decisions" of the new parliament.

The Dar al-Ifta, which has been regularly criticised for interfering in politics, is widely considered to be a supporter of Fajr Libya in the capital and the Islamist militants in Benghazi.

In its statement, it singled out for criticism the parliament's decision to declare as "terrorists" what it called "revolutionaries."

The majority faction of the new parliament has been meeting in the far eastern town of Tobruk since the Islamists and their allies took control of Tripoli last month.

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Libya Militants Denounce UN-Brokered Talks

Who #39;s in line to replace Eric Holder Fox News Video
+information fox news, news, foxs news, fox news business, fox news live stream, uk news news, latest news breaking news world news cnn news local news news ...

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