Attack on Bashiqa kicked off a larger Daesh assault

A Kurdish peshmerga fighter guards a checkpoint flying the Kurdish flag near Mosul Dam on the outskirts of the northern city of Mosul on August 18, 2014, as fighting with Islamic State (IS) militants continued for control of the strategic site.

Flanking Italy’s troops will be soldiers from the U.S.-led coalition against IS, including Kurdish Peshmerga, but Italy will be in command of the mission, the spokesman said.

US Gen. Mark Odom said he believes ISIS was trying to disrupt attempts to encircle Mosul rather than capture anything in the operation, calling it the first “serious” ISIS attack in northern Iraq since early July.

On Wednesday, the Kurdistan Regional Government announced that the Kurdish forces had killed at least 70 Daesh militants during the latter’s assault on Bashiqa.

Warplanes from five coalition countries responded with overnight air strikes, dropping about 100 precision munitions that destroyed the construction vehicles, killed almost 200 militants and slowed the attack until peshmerga forces regrouped and repelled them the following morning, Warren said. “And if this is all they’ve got, things are going to begin to get worse and worse for this enemy”, Warren said. Nujaifi, who was at the camp at the time of the attack, said that he came under a 2.5-hour barrage of mortar fire.

The officials said four Turkish soldiers were injured in the attack which was part of a broader offensive by the insurgents on Kurdish positions around the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday the 15-member UN Security Council unanimously approved a resolution aimed at striking the finances of the Islamic State, which are already precarious.

“It is the largest (attack) that the Canadian Forces training up north have been involved in”.