Kurdish Iraqi forces launched a major operation Wednesday to retake the militant-held town of Sinjar in northern Iraq, part of a push to secure the road that leads directly to the Syrian border.

Washington has an agreement with Baghdad on privileges and immunities for the growing number of troops based in Iraq who are helping in the fight against the Islamic State group, the new U.S. ambassador said Thursday.

Plunging oil prices and soaring costs from Iraq’s war against the Islamic State group is hurting Iraq’s economy and will prompt government spending cuts, including in defense, the country’s finance minister said Wednesday.

Iranian jets have carried out airstrikes in Iraq against Islamic State militants in recent days, U.S. officials and independent analysts say, underscoring the strange alliances generated by the war against the extremist group that has beheaded Americans and blown up rivals’ holy sites.

An Iraqi official denied Wednesday that a woman detained in Lebanon is a wife of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State group, adding that she is the sister of a terror suspect being held in Iraq.

Kurdish forces, backed by U.S.-led airstrikes, launched a new offensive Wednesday targeting the Islamic State group in areas of Iraq that the extremists had captured this past summer.

Goran Mohammed had just completed his second year of university in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil when he dropped out to help his father run the family grocery store. When that still didn’t earn the family enough money, the 19 year old was forced to take a second job as a taxi driver.

The Iraqi federal government and the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq have reached an agreement Thursday over longstanding oil and budget disputes that for months have created a rift between the two sides.

The attack was the most humiliating the Iraqi military had faced since June, when security forces melted away in the face of the Islamic State group’s lightning advance across northern Iraq.