Iraqi autonomous Kurdish region’s peshmerga forces and fighters from the Yazidi minority, a local Kurdish-speaking community which ISIS had targeted in the area, enter the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, in the Nineveh Province, on November 13, 2015. AFP PHOTO / SAFIN HAMED

Kurdish forces backed by U.S. airstrikes seized the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar from ISIS on Friday, a Reuters witness said, in one of the most significant counter-attacks since the militants swept through the north last year.

“ISIL defeated and on the run,” the Kurdistan regional security council said in a tweet, using another name for ISIS. It said Kurdish peshmerga forces, which led the operation, had secured Sinjar’s wheat silo, cement factory, hospital and several other public buildings.

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Peshmerga forces are trying to break militants’ ability to move fighters and supplies between Iraq and Syria

Iraqi Kurdish forces on Thursday launched a major operation against the Islamic State group in the town of Sinjar, which lies on a key supply line for the jihadists, a senior officer said.

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Dozens of people have been killed in Lebanon’s worst terrorist attack this year after a double suicide bombing in south Beirut upended a fragile peace.

The health ministry said 43 people had died and 239 had been wounded in the twin blasts on Thursday, which targeted the Shia-majority district of Burj al-Barajneh. It was the first major suicide bombing to strike the country since a similar attack in January that targeted an Alawite area in the northern city of Tripoli. The number of casualties is likely to rise due to the severity of the attack.

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Syrian regime army forces broke a siege imposed by militants of the Islamic State (ISIS) on a key military air base in Aleppo, a military source said on Tuesday.

The Kweyris air base, a major military base for Syrian regime troops in the northern province of Aleppo, has been under ISIS siege for more than a year.

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Yemen’s Iran-backed rebels have regained several positions lost in recent months across the country’s south, in a fresh push towards the Gulf-backed government’s temporary headquarters in port city Aden, military sources said Sunday

In Lahj province, which borders Aden, rebels are now positioned on a hill overlooking the strategic Al-Anad airbase, according to the sources.

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