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US Air Power Aiding Iraq in Fight Against Militants

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The U.S. military helped Iraqi and Kurd forces recapture a strategic dam in the north from the Sunni extremists.
The U.S. military helped Iraqi and Kurd forces recapture a strategic dam in the north from the Sunni extremists.
Backed by a series of U.S. airstrikes, Iraq’s military is fighting back against Islamic militants who have seized large swathes of land across the north and west of the country into Syria declaring it a “caliphate.”

On Tuesday, Iraqi forces halted an advance designed to retake the hometown of executed former dictator Saddam Hussein after facing fierce resistance from Islamic State militants, officers in the operations room told Reuters.

Iraqi forces came under heavy machinegun and mortar fire south of Tikrit, while to the west landmines and snipers undermined efforts to get closer to a town they have tried to retake several times, said the officers.

Resident of central Tikrit said by telephone Islamic State fighters were firmly in control of their positions and were running patrols along main streets.

Officials said the offensive began early Tuesday.

Success in Mosul

Monday, the U.S. military helped Iraqi and Kurd forces recapture a strategic dam in the north from the Sunni extremists.

President Obama said if the militants had breached the Mosul Dam, it would have brought “catastrophic” floods to northern Iraq, killing thousands.

On Monday, an Iraqi army spokesman said the Iraqi flag has been hoisted at the dam, but acknowledged that the facility was not fully secure at that point.  Lieutenant General Qassim al-Moussawi said on Monday that troops are looking for explosives left behind by the militant group.

”Some of the dam facilities have not been cleared yet. But what is important is that the security forces have arrived at the dam and they were able to capture the dam and conduct a full check around it to make sure that it’s empty of bombs and explosive charges,” he said. “The Iraqi flag has been raised on the dam this morning at 1100 [0800 GMT].”

Obama said the U.S. is seeing important progress in Iraq, helping push back the militants and providing arms and aid to Kurdish and Iraqi forces.

In Geneva, the United Nations refugee agency said it is preparing a massive operation to provide aid to 500,000 people displaced in northern Iraq.

The agency said tents and other supplies will be airlifted to Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish autonomous region, starting Wednesday.

The U.N. estimates that 1.2 million Iraqis have been displaced by fighting this year, since the Islamic State group took over large parts of northwestern Iraq.

The Pentagon said it carried out 15 more airstrikes Monday against Islamic State militants near the dam, destroying more of their fighting positions and weapons.

The Mosul Dam is crucial to northern Iraq, providing electricity and irrigation for much of the region.

The United States first launched airstrikes earlier this month against the insurgents, in part to prevent the killing of thousands of minority Yazidis stranded on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq.

The tragic narrative of the most recent persecution of the Yazidis began when Islamic State militants stormed into a northern Iraqi village and ordered everyone to convert to Islam or die only one person refused. That did not satisfy the Sunni insurgents, however, who are even more hardline than al-Qaeda.

The militants, who have seized much of northern Iraq since arriving from Syria in June, wasted no time after the village’s leader, or sheik, stood up for his ancient Yazidi faith.

Khalof Khodede, an unemployed father of three who escaped with his life, recalled how 80 men in the village of Kocho were killed and all the women and girls were kidnapped.

His account, one of the first eyewitness reports of last Friday’s killings, could not be independently verified, but other Yazidis and Iraqi officials have given details of Islamic State’s attack on the village.

“First they wanted us all to convert to Islam and we said yes just to save our lives. We were all very afraid,” said Khodede, from a hospital bed in the town of Dohuk in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq.

Dohuk is now home to thousands of refugees from Iraq’s minority Yazidi community which has paid the heaviest price for Islamic State’s ambition to redraw the map of the Middle East.

“Then our sheik said, ‘I won’t convert to Islam.’ And then they gathered us inside the village school,” he said.

The men were taken to the first floor and the women to the second after the villagers’ money and gold jewelry were seized, probably to fund the group made up of Iraqis and other Arabs, as well as foreign fighters.

The Yazidis were loaded onto minibuses in groups of 10 to 20 and transported outside the village after being told they would be taken to Sinjar, the ancient homeland of the sect.

The vehicles stopped abruptly and the militants opened fire without warning. “They started shooting at us randomly. They had heavy guns like machine guns. I was hit in my leg and on my pelvis,” said Khodede, showing where he had been wounded.

The Yazidis, followers of an ancient religion derived from Zoroastrianism who are part of Iraq’s Kurdish community, are not strangers to oppression.

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