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KURDISH Peshmerga forces launched a new offensive against the Islamic State (Isis) terror group in Iraq today.
Kurdish forces will strike at parts of the Diyala and Kirkuk provinces which have been under Isis control since August, when the group launched a blitzkrieg that saw it seize control of about a third of the country in a few weeks.
The Diyala towns of Saafiya and Jalula were retaken by Kurdish and Iraqi troops, while Peshmerga fighters are also advancing on the Kirkuk town of Kharbaroot.
House-to-house battles continued to rage in the northern Syrian city of Kobane where the autonomous socialist Rojava region is resisting an Isis siege.
Reports said Kobane’s People’s Protection Units had captured six buildings formerly occupied by Isis and confiscated “large amounts” of weaponry.
Despite Isis being accused of genocide in areas it controls, with the extremist network bragging openly of the mass killings it unleashes on opponents and people of different faiths, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday that no deal had been finalised on helping train and equip people battling Isis.
Turkey has stonewalled on allowing assistance to Kobane, fearing the autonomous state’s survival could encourage its own oppressed Kurdish population to intensify their decades-long struggle for autonomy.
And Mr Erdogan yesterday reiterated that, as far as he was concerned, overthrowing the secular government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria “must be a priority.”
Arms flooding across the Turkish border into Syria to help insurgents battle the Syrian government have massively boosted Isis’s firepower.
