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Kurdish forces retook the northern Iraqi town of Zumar and several nearby villages from Islamic State early on Saturday, Oct 25, after heavy coalition air strikes against the Islamist insurgents, security sources said, according to Reuters.
A Kurdish intelligence officer in Zumar said peshmerga forces had advanced from five directions in the early morning and encountered fierce resistance, but ultimately prevailed. A spokesman for the peshmerga ministry also said Zumar was now in Kurdish hands.
Free Syrian Army fighters shoot their weapons during clashes with forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad around Handarat area Oct. 16, 2014. (AFP)
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that 1,300 Free Syrian Army fighters would join Kurds in defending the key Syrian border town of Kobane from an assault by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria militants.
The Syrian Kurds have “accepted 1,300 people from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and they are holding talks to determine the transit route,” Erdogan told reporters in Estonia’s capital Tallinn.
Turkey has reportedly agreed to allow up to 200 heavily armed Peshmerga fighters to enter into the city of Kobani in order to fight Islamic State militants.
Fuad Hussein, the Kurdistan President’s Chief of Staff, confirmed in an interview today that “a small group of Peshmerga fighters will be in Kobani within days”.
Islamic State militants advanced on Iraq’s Mount Sinjar on Tuesday, tightening a siege of thousands of stranded Yazidis, who called on the United States and its allies to act to avert more bloodshed.
The attack is the latest threat to minority Yazidis, thousands of whom have been shot, buried alive or sold into slavery by Islamic State militants, who regard them as devil-worshippers.
Dozens of Houthis were killed, injured and arrested as violence intensified on Monday in Yemen’s central city of Baidha where militants from the al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the Zaidi Houthi Group continued to fight.
Informed sources said AQAP militants escalated their battles and attacks including car bombs against Houthi militants in the Rada town killing, wounding and arresting more than 80 Houthis.