Peshmarga General: US, NATO Needed to Defeat IS in Iraq
The head of the Peshmarga forces in Iraq says U.S. airstrikes against the Islamic State are helpful where they are being done aggressively. General Sirwan Barzani told VOA that without potentially...
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Peshmarga General: US, NATO Needed to Defeat IS in Iraq - Video
The French militarys released a video after French jets attacked a suspected IS target in Iraq
isis airstrike by french army isis airstrike by french army The French military has released a video after French jets attacked a suspected Islamic State target in Iraq for the first time....
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U.S. jets conduct missions against Islamic militants in Iraq
The U.S. Navy releases video of jets conducting missions against Islamic militants in Iraq from the deck of the U.S.S. George H.W. Bush. Rough Cut (no reporter narration). Subscribe: http://smartu...
By: Reuters
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U.S. jets conduct missions against Islamic militants in Iraq - Video
The air strikes have helped Kurds claw back lost territory. This week they retook ground in the northern province of Nineveh including villages in the Khazer area and several others further west around the town of Zummar, which remains under IS control.
Elsewhere in Nineveh, Islamic State offered another sign of its growing authority over Iraqis, creating a police force "to implement the orders of the religious judiciary" , according to a well-known militant Islamist website.
French officials said Friday's mission involved two Rafale fighter jets, a supply plane and a Navy reconnaissance plane. Four air strikes were carried out in the space of half an hour, destroying a storage facility containing vehicles, arms and fuel, a spokesman for Defense Minister Jean-Yves LeDrian said.
Hollande has said French military action would be limited to Iraq and no ground troops would be sent.
Kurdish exodus
In neighboring Syria, Western powers are more reluctant to launch military strikes which could be seen to bolster President Bashar al-Assad after they repeatedly called for his departure over his military response to popular protests in 2011.
But U.S. President Barack Obama said last week he had authorized air strikes in Syria too and would not hesitate to take action, although he also stressed plans to arm "moderate" Syrian rebel fighters to help them take on Islamic State.
Exploiting the security vacuum in the north of the country, Islamic State fighters have expanded their reach, attacking mainly Kurdish villages near the border with Turkey over the last two days, driving out a wave of refugees.
Several thousand Syrian Kurds began crossing into Turkey on Friday, fleeing IS fighters who are besieging the mainly Kurdish town of Ayn al-Arab, known as Kobani in Kurdish.
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Arbil, Iraq On a warm evening at Arbil International Airport in Iraqi Kurdistan some 150 mostly Christian refugees anxiously waited to flee their homeland aboard a French government plane.
The refugees, of all ages and from 25 different families, had one message as they prepared to fly to Paris to escape the threat of Islamic State militants: Christians and Muslims can no longer live together in Iraq.
Shakeep, a 46-year-old lawyer who worked at Mosul's main law court, was taking his wife, mother, daughter and nephew to Tours in western France, where his uncle lives. One bag each was all they had left of their belongings.
"There is no future in Iraq. There can be no future between Muslims and Christians here. I leave my life. I'm between sadness and happiness. But with Daech, we can't come back," he said, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.
The family left Mosul six weeks ago after being given an ultimatum to convert or be killed by the Islamic State militants, who have seized large swathes of Iraq and Syria.
France has led European efforts to bring humanitarian aid to refugees. The government plane, an Airbus A310, delivered 10 more tonnes of blankets, tents, jerry cans and hygiene kits before transporting the refugees back to Paris.
"There are people sleeping outdoors at the moment, but the focus of this delivery is to prepare for the thousands who will still be here in the winter," a French diplomat said. "It's a veritable ethnic cleansing that we've witnessed here."
French fighter jets on Friday launched strikes inside Iraq for the first time as part of an international coalition that will initially focus on pushing Islamic State back from Iraq to its power base in Syria. It has also delivered weapons, mostly machine guns and ammunition, to Kurdish Peshmerga fighters.
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France, under pressure from public opinion to admit more Christians from the Middle East, has already taken in around 100 people since Islamic State launched its military offensive in Iraq in June.
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'There is no future in Iraq.' Christian refugees escape to France