peshmerga fighters

When in Paris after the Charlie Hebdo attacks last January, I wrote a column suggesting that we all had to demonstrate a new toughness.

The Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq released a video Sunday purportedly showing the joint raid of a prison by U.S. and Kurdish peshmerga forces in which they released 70 hostages held by the Islamic State.

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.

The Islamic State group launched an attack Saturday on the Syrian border town of Kobani from Turkey — a first in the ongoing siege, a Kurdish official and activists said.

Iraqi Kurdish forces will only stay in Syria “temporarily” to help reinforce fellow Kurds fighting to defend the town of Kobani from militants with the Islamic State group, an Iraqi Kurdish politician said Sunday, adding that coalition airstrikes alone will not defeat the militant threat.

A vanguard force of Iraqi peshmerga troops entered the embattled Syrian border town of Kobani from Turkey on Thursday, part of a larger group of 150 fighters that the Kurds hope will turn back an offensive by militants of the Islamic State group.

Iraqi peshmerga troops were cheered Wednesday by fellow Kurds in southeastern Turkey as the fighters slowly made their way toward the Syrian Kurdish border town of Kobani to try to break a siege there by Islamic State militants.

Dozens of Iraq’s Kurdish peshmerga fighters will fly to Turkey on Tuesday and from there cross into the Syrian border town of Kobani to help fellow Kurds fight Muslim militants, a spokesman for the Kurdish force said.

Fighters from the Islamic State group launched Saturday a new offensive on the northern Syrian town of Kobani after shelling the area from their positions nearby, activists and a Kurdish official said.

Lebanon announced on Thursday it will not accept any more refugees from neighboring war-torn Syria, except in what authorities deem to be “exceptional” cases — a move that could prevent tens of thousands of Syrians from escaping the civil war.

Lawmakers in Iraq’s largely autonomous Kurdish region Wednesday authorized peshmerga forces to go to neighboring Syria and help fellow Kurds combat Islamic State militants in the key border town of Kobani, providing much-needed boots on the ground.

Syrian President Bashar Assad is taking advantage of the US-led coalition’s war against the Islamic State group to pursue a withering air and ground campaign against more mainstream rebels elsewhere in the country, trying to recapture areas considered more crucial to the survival of his government.

Islamic State group fighters seized at least one cache of weapons airdropped by U.S.-led coalition forces that were meant to supply Kurdish militiamen battling the extremist group in a border town, activists said Tuesday.

In a period of about six weeks spanning August and September 2014, President Obama dramatically revamped his Middle East policy to put degrading and destroying the Islamic State (ISIS) at its center.

The Kurds of Syria and Iraq have become a major focal point in the war against the Islamic State group, with Kurdish populations in both countries coming under significant threat by the militants’ lightening advance.

The U.S.-led coalition ramped up its aerial bombardment of Islamic State positions in the Syrian border town of Kobani on Thursday as the extremist group battled street by street with Kurdish forces and reportedly rushed in reinforcements from surrounding areas.

As U.S. generals and Secretary of State John Kerry warn that a strategic Syrian border town could fall to Islamic State militants, the Turkish military has deployed its tanks on its side of the frontier but only watched the slaughter.