Kurdish peshmerga forces on Tuesday recaptured seven Christian villages in northern Iraq in clashes with Islamic State (IS) jihadists, an officer and a cleric said.
Tens of thousands of Iraqi Christians, most of them Chaldeans, fled their homes when IS militants launched a renewed drive in the north in early August.
Iraq’s largest Christian town, Qaraqosh, and dozens of other villages were all but emptied in what Christian leaders described as the worst disaster for the minority in centuries.
On Tuesday, peshmerga forces ousted IS militants from seven villages west of the Kurdish capital Arbil during fighting in which rockets and mortar rounds were used, a senior officer said.
“We liberated those villages with the support of US aircraft,” Major Sardar Ali said, referring to the Nineveh plains area between Arbil and Mosul, the main IS hub in Iraq.
The United States, whose air force has been targeting IS jihadists in the area since early August, has yet to confirm it carried out the latest reported strikes.
The officer said many of the homes were booby-trapped by the jihadists before they retreated.
The peshmerga, the main security forces of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, are receiving arms and ammunition from countries including the United States and France.
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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/kurds-liberate-christian-villages-from-islamic-state-jihadists-in-iraq/
