Iraq: Kurdish forces fightback against IS in Gwer скачать в хорошем качестве

Iraq: Kurdish forces fightback against IS in Gwer

Kurdish forces sweep forward in northern Iraq in the wake of air strikes by US fighter jets and drones. The Telegraph's Richard Spencer reports from Gwer. American air strikes over northern Iraq bore their first fruits on the ground on Sunday as Kurdish forces swept forward in the wake of attacks by US fighter jets on Islamic State positions south of Erbil. Bodies of Islamic State jihadists, mangled and broken, lay near their burned out, machine-gun mounted pickup trucks as The Telegraph followed Kurdish Peshmerga forces into the IS-held town of Gwer on Sunday afternoon. The attack on Gwer by the Peshmerga followed direct co-ordination with the Americans, Kurdish ground troops said. They had been told to prepare for an attack at 5am. Some skirmishes followed – the tactics were not clear, but may have been an attempt to draw the jihadists into the open. Then, between 9 and 10am, the fighter jets struck. "I was standing on the bridge over there when they came in," said Shedzah Kakarosh, a Peshmerga fighter. Next to him smoked the shell of a truck, the mount of its heavy machine-gun smoking on its base behind him, which he said he saw being hit by a jet-fired missile. President Barack Obama authorised strikes after the Islamic State seized Christian and Yazidi towns villages in the north of the country last week, killing or driving out their inhabitants, and then took up positions within 30 miles of Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish Autonomous Region. Peshmerga soldiers were angry that they had been ordered to retreat from the towns, which they had been protecting until the middle of last week, and keen to take advantage of the American strikes. By early afternoon, the Peshmerga were able to enter the town in a convoy of vehicles and take up positions on the further side, where shooting continued. The Kurdish forces were cheering ecstatically at the first major victory of their fightback against Islamic State in Gwer on Sunday afternoon – and at the revival of an old alliance with the United States. But the total advance had been just ten miles, with the Islamic State invisible in the distance, still there and in charge of much of the country. Get the latest headlines http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ Subscribe to The Telegraph http://www.youtube.com/subscription_c... Like us on Facebook   / telegraph.co.uk   Follow us on Twitter   / telegraph   Follow us on Google+ https://plus.google.com/1028913550727... Telegraph.co.uk and    / telegraphtv   are websites of The Daily Telegraph, the UK's best-selling quality daily newspaper providing news and analysis on UK and world events, business, sport, lifestyle and culture.