The New York Times 10 Aug 2014 Kurdish Forces Confront ISIS Fighters as U.S. Airstrikes Continue By ROD NORDLAND and HELENE COOPER GWER, Iraq — Kurdish forces on Sunday carried out counterattacks against Sunni militants in two crucial border towns, as American aircraft struck the militants in northern Iraq, witnesses and military officials said. The American airstrikes, carried out by drones and fighter jets, were intended to protect Kurdish forces near Erbil, the capital of the Iraqi Kurdistan region, according to a statement by the United States Central Command. The strikes hit several armed vehicles of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, destroying three and damaging others. The strikes also destroyed an ISIS mortar position, the statement said. The smoking hulks of three vehicles could be seen here, only three hours after one of the airstrikes, and the dismembered bodies of three men were sprawled near one wreck. Exultant Kurdish fighters, known as pesh merga, identified the bearded remains as ISIS militants. Kurdish officials said they had retaken Gwer earlier on Sunday and were on the verge of seizing Makhmur, where American military planes first struck the positions of ISIS fighters on Friday. Both towns are about 20 miles from Erbil, and advances by ISIS fighters there had briefly panicked residents in Erbil. The American airstrikes seemed to have quickly restored confidence here, with international flights into Erbil resuming after a pause, and business returning to normal. Cheering truckloads of pesh merga fighters cruised the highway between here and Erbil. American military officials said that four American airstrikes on Saturday hit ISIS positions near Mount Sinjar, where tens of thousands of members of the Yazidi minority had fled to escape the ISIS advance. American officials said the strikes were compelled by the militants’ vow to kill the Yazidis, whom the Sunni extremists regard as heretics. At least 500 Yazidis have been killed by ISIS fighters since they seized Sinjar this month, Iraq’s human rights minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, said in an interview. A senior Obama administration official said the United States was aware that a small number of Yazidis on the mountain had found a path into Syria. But the official said the number of the displaced who had managed to leave was in the hundreds, only a small fraction of those stranded there. The official said the United States did not view the corridor into Syria as a significant part of the solution for rescuing the Yazidis, but rather as an “ad hoc” effort made by the refugees themselves. The American military did not help to clear the path into Syria, the official said, noting that the Iraqi and Kurdish forces will have to find a way to escort all of the people off the mountain and relocate them to safety. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, sharply criticized President Obama’s limited military response to ISIS on Sunday, and called on the president to be clearer about the threat the militants pose to the United States. “If he does not go on the offensive against ISIS, ISIL, whatever you guys want to call it, they are coming here,” Mr. Graham said on “Fox News Sunday.” “This is just not about Baghdad. This is just not about Syria. And if we do get attacked, then he will have committed a blunder for the ages.” Mr. Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, echoed Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who said on Saturday that Mr. Obama showed a “fundamental misunderstanding” of the threat from the Islamic militants. Democrats on the Sunday talk shows insisted that there was no American military solution to the violence in Iraq, which the president also emphasized in a news conference on Saturday. “In order to put the situation right, we have to begin at the fundamental core, which is leadership in Baghdad, Iraqi leadership, which will work together in a unified way to defend and protect their country and defeat ISIS,” Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, said on the CBS News program “Face the Nation.” “Ultimately, this has to be a political strategy that takes place in Baghdad, not in Washington.”
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 21:03:36 +0000
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