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The 70-mile stretch of dusty highway connecting Kirkuk to Sulaymaniyah in Northern Iraq looks like any other road in the worldexcept for the 70-plus gas stations lining the shoulder. Some look more like a temple. Or have gold-plated pillars. Or brandish a snappy set of Kurdish flags.

In a country with 140 billion barrels of crude oil reserve, pretty much anyone can start a gas station. Some families own a bunch. The economics of the business push prices as low as $1.60 per gallon. And everyone along Sulaimani-Kirkuk Road is selling pretty much the same stuff. So the filling stations have had to find some way to set themselves apart. The answer will be familiar to anyone who studies deer antlers or peacock plumage: Its all about the ornaments.

Photographer Eugenio Grosso visited the road last September, and the visual experience sent him grabbing for his camera. A petrol station on its own is quite boring, he says. But these stations are all different, and different from what we expect. Grosso hired a taxi driver and spent a day snapping photos of air pumps next to murals of fiery arrows.

Ostentatious roadside architecture has long been a hallmark of car-based societies. The architects Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour figured it out in Learning from Las Vegasif you want to impress someone speeding by in a jaunty automobile, you have to build to be seen quickly, and from a distance, which is to say big, bright, and tall. (See also: classic Los Angeles department stores and Sleeping Beautys Castle.) For the Iraqi gas stations, some kind of weird architectural Darwinian sexual selection is at work; the boldest and brightest wins the thirsty car.

Grossos series Oil City showcases an array of architectural frippery, from delicate ivory towers to sinuous, googie-style roofs. Some enterprising owners even rip well-known oil brands logosBO instead of BP, Shall instead of Shell. Humbler spots slap on bright stripes and a string of lights. Sure, the road has its share of shabby, single pump-and-hose places, but most do their best to lure in fickle drivers.

None of the roadside spectacle guarantees success. Grosso noticed more than one location looked a bit deserted. Some looked like a gas station in a ghost villagesomeone sleeping in the shade, no customers there, he says. Perhaps its time to invest in some gold-plated pillars.

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The Weird and Wonderful Gas Stations of Iraq (Yes, Gas Stations) - WIRED

SOUTHWEST ASIA, Feb. 13, 2017 U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Syria and Iraq yesterday, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of the latest strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

Attack, bomber and fighter aircraft conducted 15 strikes consisting of 15 engagements in Syria:

-- Near Abu Kamal, a strike destroyed 27 oil barrels, 11 oil storage tanks and two oil tanker trucks.

-- Near Palmyra, a strike destroyed an anti-air artillery system.

-- Near Raqqa, 13 strikes engaged eight ISIL tactical units; destroyed eight fighting positions and a vehicle and damaged four supply routes.

Strikes in Iraq

Artillery as well as attack, fighter and rotary wing aircraft conducted two strikes consisting of 22 engagements in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraqs government:

-- Near Mosul, two strikes engaged an ISIL tactical unit and a staging area; destroyed eight watercraft, three barges, three vehicles, a tunnel entrance, a mortar system and a weapons facility; and suppressed four mortar teams.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target. Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike.

Part of Operation Inherent Resolve

The strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to eliminate the ISIL terrorist group and the threat they pose to Iraq, Syria, and the wider international community. The destruction of ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq further limits the terrorist group's ability to project terror and conduct operations, officials said.

Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Syria include the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Iraq include the United States, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

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Military Strikes Target ISIL Terrorists in Syria, Iraq > U.S. ... - Department of Defense

UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, Southwest AsiaIt's an often unheralded and sometimes painful task, but the resupply missions conducted by the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing are critical to the fight against the Islamic State.

Some flights are quick, lasting just under four hours round-trip with just one stop on the way. But others have multiple stops and can take about 12 hours.

"We call it the Iraq pain train," saidTech. Sgt. Nathan Schultz, a loadmaster. "Those can be long and tedious. You're constantly loading, unloading, reconfiguring. A lot of times you'll get to the destination, you'll unload all your pallets, and then you'll have to bring on 50 people, [and] you'll have to put all the seats down. It can be a painful transition back and forth."

And when emergency strikessuch as the Islamic State's October destruction of a sulfur plant near Mosul, which spewed toxic clouds for days as it burned and sickened hundredslogistics officers and transport aircraft work together to get life-saving supplies into the field as quickly as possible. In the case of the sulfur plant attack, this included scrambling to gather hundreds of gas mask filters for coalition forces at the nearby Qayyarah West Airfield, saidCapt. Jeff Benson, a logistics officer assigned to Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve.

Multiple times each day, huge C-130s and C-17s from the 386th are packed with cargo and personnel for flights into Iraq and other locations. The 386th flies about 475 cargo sorties per month, moving roughly 6,200 tons of cargo and 6,700 passengers monthly.

This day, though, none of those emergency supplies would be neededit would be a textbook supply run, encountering nothing more dangerous in the air than an Iraqi passenger Airbus.

"That's more of a danger than anything we've noticed in the air," Schultz said.

"It's kind of boring, those days that we have off," Schultz said. "We'd rather be flying, but we need to have a day so that we can recuperate."

On the Jan. 10 flight, the trip to Iraq included a FASTor Fly-Away Security Teamto guard the plane while it unloaded on the Taji runway. One of those FAST airmen, Tech. Sgt. Joseph Cull, wore a pink-and-black patch on his body armor, above pouches packed with spare ammunition, that combined the logos of the comic book vigilante the Punisher and Hello Kitty.

Shortly before takeoff, 11 soldiers from the Armys 86th Expeditionary Signal Battalion boarded and strapped themselves into their seats near the front of the cargo hold. Some soldiers folded their arms, lowered their heads and napped. Others pulled out their smartphones and put in their earbuds, or chewed tobacco, or shot the breeze with one another.

Army Sgt. Timothy Kovacs, 27, a team leader, said they had arrived in the region eight days earlier and were headed to Taji for about eight months to lay fiber optic cable there and at other forward operating bases throughout Iraq.

Im ready to get there, he said.

Someone on the flight mentioned going home in a few days. Spc. Laryssa Allen, 21, also on her first deployment, said, Im jelly. I wish I were home.

The others ribbed Allen for her homesicknessand for saying jelly. She took the joking in stride, firing back: It is a word! Look it up.

You just got here, Spc. Alfredo Garza, 26, said with a laugh.

The soldiers let the kidding drop as the plane taxied to the runway and took off. Allen said something to Cpl. Gabriela Danielson, 24 years old and on her second deployment, who nodded. They leaned in close together, Allen held out her smartphone, and she took a selfie of their smiling faces as they flew off to their war.

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The 'pain train': C-130s ferry troops to Iraq, keep bases supplied - AirForceTimes.com

Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Bahgdadi was seriously injured in a recent airstrike, several Iraqi news outlets reported on Sunday.

The Iraqi television station al-Hura cited a security source saying Baghdadi and other senior members of the terror group were injured two days ago in an airstrike in Iraq. They were reportedly transferred to Syria for treatment.

The Iraqi air force reportedly carried out the airstrike that injured Baghdadi after receiving information from the Iraqi Falcon Intelligence Cell of his whereabouts.

The security source also said Baghdadi had been living in an underground bunker and was targeted while meeting with the jihadi groups leadership.

Shortly after terrorist fighters swept across swathes of Iraq in June 2014, Baghdadi appeared at the Great Mosque of Al-Nuri to proclaim a state straddling Syria and Iraq in front of thousands of Muslim faithful.

The video of the appearance in Mosul which showed a man with a black and grey beard wearing a black robe and matching turban is the only one IS has released of Baghdadi to date.

It is rather remarkable that the leader of the most image-conscious terrorist group is so low-key in terms of his own publicity, said Patrick Skinner, an analyst with the Soufan Group intelligence consultancy.

Baghdadi has been reported wounded in airstrikes multiple times, but the claims have never been verified, and his apparent survival has added to his mystique.

In mid-December, the United States more than doubled the bounty on the shadowy IS leaders head to $25 million.

An Iraqi intelligence report indicates that Baghdadi has a PhD in Islamic studies and was a professor at Tikrit University.

Baghdadi apparently joined the insurgency that erupted after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, at one point spending time in an American military prison in the countrys south.

AFP contributed to this report.

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Islamic State leader badly injured in Iraq airstrike reports - The Times of Israel

Arbil (Iraq) (AFP) - British Defence Minister Michael Fallon said Saturday in Iraq that he expected to see the Islamic State group expelled from the country's major towns by the end of 2017.

"We expect to see Daesh (IS) expelled from the major towns and cities of Iraq during the course of the year," he told reporters in Arbil, the capital of Iraq's northern autonomous region of Kurdistan.

Iraqi forces are nearly four months into a massive operation to retake nearby Mosul, which is the country's second city and where IS supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed a "caliphate" in 2014.

The jihadist organisation then controlled around a third of Iraq, but federal and allied forces have since retaken around two thirds of that territory and Mosul is IS's last major stronghold.

After retaking the eastern side of Mosul last month, Iraqi forces are currently preparing to launch an assault on the part of the city that lies west of the Tigris River.

Commanders expect the battle to be fierce because the narrow streets of the Old City will complicate operations and the western side also harbours some traditional jihadist bastions.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said around the new year that he expected his forces would need three more months to rid the country of IS.

Most observers argued that the premier's prediction was optimistic, however, with Mosul alone threatening to bog down Iraqi forces way past that target.

Retaking the northern city would deal a death blow to the "caliphate" and any claim that IS is still running a "state", but the group retains control of several populated areas.

In Iraq, IS still holds Hawijah, a large town southeast of Mosul, and the town of Al-Qaim on the western border with Syria.

When Iraqi forces retake Mosul, the jihadists' last major hub will be the city of Raqa in neighbouring Syria.

"The situation in Syria is more complicated, given the continuation of the civil war there," Fallon said.

A 60-nation coalition led by the United States has carried out thousands of air strikes in support of the war on IS and provided assistance and training to thousands of Iraqi forces.

Britain is a key member of that coalition, together with France, Italy and Australia.

Fallon said the Royal Air Force had struck 300 targets in and around Mosul since the operation to retake the city began on October 17.

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UK sees IS being ousted from Iraq towns this year - Yahoo News