THE battered pickup truck bounced and jolted across the field, kicking up plumes of dust before screeching to a halt next to an abandoned building. The machine-gunner jumped from the back, screaming at a group of Peshmerga fighters for help. “We got hit by a sniper. This man needs help. Quickly,” he yelled.
Two fighters dragged the wounded soldier from the truck. Grimacing in pain from the bullet that had shattered his hip, he managed to raise two bloody fingers in a limp victory salute, then slumped onto a mattress in the back of a makeshift ambulance that lurched across fields of golden grass towards a nearby field hospital.
Harassed by sniper fire and slowed down by the suicide bombers of Islamic State (IS), Kurdish and Iraqi forces have taken heavy casualties as they fight their way towards the key city of Mosul—Iraq’s second-largest city and the place where the jihadists first announced the creation of their “caliphate” two years ago.
Villages freshly captured by the Iraqi army and Shia militias on the roads leading north to Mosul showed signs of the jihadists’ hasty retreat. Weapon caches had been...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/2eRVHYk
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