Kurdish forces in northern Iraq drove Daesh militants out of ten villages in Kirkuk province on Wednesday with the support of US-led coalition airstrikes, Kurdish military sources told Reuters.
The early morning assault began in the Daquq area, 175 kilometers north of Baghdad. By evening, Kurdish forces controlled an area of 250 square kilometers in the region.
An aide to a top Kurdish commander told Reuters five Kurdish fighters had been killed, most of them by improvised explosives.
“This area [near Daquq] posed a danger to the main road from Kirkuk to Baghdad and the Kurdish and other villages adjacent to the areas occupied by Daesh,” Brigadier General Aras Abdel Rahman told Reuters.
The frontline between Kurdish forces and Daesh in Iraq has remained mostly static for months, as the Kurds already control most of the territory they claim as their own, and have little incentive to push further into Arab-dominated towns and villages.
