Kurds gain ground in Iraq as Britain joins fray

Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq captured a border crossing with Syria on Tuesday, expelling Islamic State (IS) militants in heavy fighting that ground down to vicious house-to-house combat and close quarters sniping. In neighboring Syria, Kurdish militiamen were on the defensive as the extremists pressed ahead with a relentless assault on a town near the Turkish border. The attack on Kobani, also known as Ayn Arab, has driven more than 160,000 people across the frontier in the past few days. Iraqi Kurdish fighters, known as peshmerga, were doing the bulk of the fighting on the ground as a U.S.-led coalition carried out an aerial assault against the Islamic State group in both Iraq and Syria.

We want two things from the world: Logistical support, training and arming, in addition to aerial coverage of these areas.

Hadi Bahra, the head of the main Western-backed Syrian opposition group

Britain joined the air campaign Tuesday, carrying out its first strikes against the extremists in Iraq — though it does not plan to expand into Syria. The goal of the campaign is to push back the militant group that has declared a self-styled caliphate, or Islamic state, ruled by its brutal interpretation of Islam in territory it has seized across much of Iraq and Syria. In Britain’s first airstrikes of the campaign, two Tornado jets hit a heavy weapons post and an armored vehicle being used by the militants to attack Kurdish forces in northwest Iraq, British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said in London.

When we do release our weapons we have to be absolutely sure that they are against ISIL targets, that they are not going to kill innocent Sunni Muslim civilians… Otherwise we are having the opposite of the effect we are intending to have

Philip Hammond, British foreign minister

Middle East Kurds