Baghdad (AsiaNews / Agencies) - For the first time in months, Iraqi soldiers, Kurdish peshmerga and Shiite militias have launched a counter-offensive against the jihadists of the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq. Thanks to the support of US air raids two days ago they broke the siege of the Shiite Turkmen city Amerli (see photo) and "in just a few hours" succeeded in retaking Suleiman Bek, 175 km north of the capital which had fallen into IS hands in June. Shiite and Kurdish forces have also surrounded the village of Yankaja, where heavy exchanges of artillery fire are taking place right now.
The convergence of military forces is a
result of attempts to unify Iraqi political
forces, which up until now have been fractioned between
Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.
The Chaldean patriarch of Baghdad, and Shiite Grand
Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani have
long campaigned to achieve this unity.
Even the international community seems
to be taking more concrete steps: United States air
support is vital to combatting the IS and has changed the tide in the battle. Meanwhile in Europe, governments are
increasingly concerned about their fellow countrymen having joined Islamist militias, who may present a terrorist
danger when they return home.
This has prompted some countries,
including Italy and Germany, to send
weapons to the Kurds and to increase border control.
The UN Human Rights Council
has unanimously voted to send a mission
to Iraq to investigate the atrocities committed by the IS, which the Iraqi Minister for Human Rights, Mohammad Shia al Sudani has
described as a " terrorist monster".
According to the UN, in the month of
August alone, 1,420 people
were killed; 1370 injured. During this period, the Islamist
offensive was at its height with the jihadists taking various locations and driving Kurdish fighters back within their borders.
In a year, at least 1.6 million Iraqis have been displaced because of violence; 850 thousand in the month of August. These include hundreds of thousands of Christians, Yazidis and thousands of Turkomans driven from their homes under threat of death if they did not convert to radical Islam.