Kurdish Peshmerga forces say they have recaptured a strategic village in northern Iraq from the Islamic State of Iraq and the levant (ISIS).
Sources told Al Jazeera on Friday that at least three Peshmerga fighters died when the group captured the village of Sultan Abd’Allah, just 80km away from the Kurdish regional capital, Erbil.
Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Adow, reporting from Erbil, said fighters had engaged in house-to-house battles with ISIl fighters in the village, demonstrating the lengths to which the group had to go in countering ISIS.
“One commander said the group had limited firepower, and were fighting with old AK-47s and that their other weapons were from the Iran-Iraq war 25 years ago,” our correspondent said.
Sultan Abd’Allah is on the banks of the Tigris river, and a highway to Mosul passes through the village.
The Kurds are determined to keep hold of the village, because losing it would mean opening up Erbil to a possible ISIl invasion.It comes as a group of Yazidi fighters attacked a key village on the Iraqi-Syrian border, Peshmerga sources told Al Jazeera.Peshmerga forces said the Yazidi fighters launched the attack, near the town of Rabia, on Friday because they were looking for girls and women abducted by members of the Islamic State in Iraq and the levant (ISIS).The Yazidi killed an unknown number of people and took many others away, including a local Imam.
The Peshmerga sources told Al Jazeera that had not known about the Yazidi’s plan to attack the village, and were unhappy the group had acted unilaterally.
Hundreds of Yazidi fighters are assisting the Peshmerga in their operation against ISIS in and around the Sinjar mountains.A renewed push by ISIS in the north in August drove Kurdish forces back towards the capital of their autonomous region, helping to spark a US-led campaign of air strikes against ISIS. Al Jazeera