Kurds claim advances in Iraq as Britain joins fray

In this image provided by Shaho Pirani shows Shaho Pirani posing with an automantic weapon near the village of Koya in Iraqi Kurdistan in June 2014. The Iranian Kurd living in Denmark, was on a month-long training camp for the Kurdish diaspora organized by Iranian branch of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. He joined Kurds from Norway, Switzerland and Britain for a crash-course on politics followed by weapons training. Shaho Pirani says he’s just a phone call away from leaving his quiet life in Denmark and joining Kurdish forces battling against Islamic State militants in Iraq. The 30-year-old Kurd, who fled from Iran with his older brother in 1991, says he feels a moral duty to help the Peshmerga, the armed forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government, to fight the “psychopaths” of the IS group. (AP Photo/Shaho Pirani)

SALHIYAH, Iraq — Kurdish officials said Tuesday their fighters recaptured a key Iraqi border crossing into Syria from Islamic State group militants in intense fighting, as Britain joined the U.S.-led international air campaign against the extremists, carrying out its first strikes in Iraq.

Kurdish fighters, known as peshmerga, said they saw their heaviest fighting yet against the Islamic State group as the Kurds waged a campaign to recapture territory lost to the extremists over the past months.

Peshmerga spokesman Halgurd Hekmat told The Associated Press that peshmerga seized the border crossing of Rabia, which the extremists had captured over the summer. Kurds wounded in the fighting who were brought to a makeshift clinic in the town of Salhiya described savage battles, with militants sniping at them from inside homes and from the windows of a hospital in Rabia.

“They’re such good fighters,” said one peshmerga fighter, who was uninjured but was resting outside the clinic on a rock surrounded by blood-soaked bandages. He refused to be identified because his not a senior officer. “They’re fighting with weapons the Iraqi military abandoned — so, American weapons really.”

British warplanes carried out their first strikes in northwestern Iraq, supporting Kurdish fighters who have been battling the Islamic State group along a long stretch of territory. The Tornado jets struck a heavy weapons post and a vehicle mounted with a machine gun being used by the extremists who were attacking Kurdish fighters, British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said in London.

The U.S. and its allies have been carrying out airstrikes in Iraq since last month, trying to push back the militant forces that overran large swaths of Iraq and neighboring Syria. American warplanes and those of several Arab allies began strikes against the group for the first time in neighboring Syria last week.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power noted the British strikes, saying the Netherlands has also sent planes and that Denmark plans to as well, once it has a parliamentary debate. “So every day has seen new contributions,” Power told reporters.

On the Syrian side, coalition jets struck around a beleaguered Kurdish town near the Syrian-Turkish border that the militants have been attacking for days. Despite the strikes, the militants have pressed their offensive on the town of Kobani, also known by its Arabic name of Ayn Arab, and surrounding villages near Syria’s border with Turkey.

The fighting has created one of the single largest exoduses in Syria’s civil war, now in its fourth year: More than 160,000 fled the area into Turkey the past few days, the U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said.

“Their fear is so great that many people crossed heavily mined fields to seek refuge,” she told the U.N. Security Council.

The U.S. Central Command said U.S. fighter jets and drones conducted 11 airstrikes Monday and Tuesday in Syria, including three near the Syria-Turkish border that destroyed one artillery piece, damaged another and knocked out two rocket launchers. It said another strike northeast of Aleppo destroyed four buildings occupied by Islamic State militants. Two strikes destroyed vehicles, artillery and a tank in eastern Syria and near the Iraq border.

Kurds and militants battled Tuesday on Kobani’s eastern edge, said Ahmad Sheikho, an activist operating along the Syria-Turkey border. He said that members of the local Kurdish militia destroyed two tanks belonging to the Islamic State group. Militants have been hitting the town with mortars and artillery shells.

A day earlier, fighting around Kobani killed 57 fighters, including both Kurds and militants, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The situation in Kobani was “very difficult,” said Nawaf Khalil, a spokesman for Syria’s leading Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD.

Just outside Kobani, Islamic State militants captured the deserted Kurdish village of Siftek on Tuesday and appeared to be using it as a headquarters from which to launch attacks on Kobani itself.

The fighting could be seen from a hilltop on the Turkish side of border, in the Karacabey area. From there, spectators — mostly Turkish Kurds — watched the fighting, some using binoculars and cheering on their Syrian Kurdish brethren.

“Long live YPG, long live Apo,” shouted one woman, referring to Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, whose group has been fighting Turkey for Kurdish autonomy. Apo is a Kurdish nickname for Abdullah.

In neighboring Iraq, heavy fighting erupted between Kurdish fighters and Islamic State militants in the town of Rabia on the Syrian border,

Hadi Bahra, the head of the main Western-backed Syrian opposition group, said the U.S.-led coalition’s strategy against the Islamic State group should include aerial assistance to moderate rebels, to help them push into areas controlled by the extremists.

“We want two things from the world: Logistical support, training and arming, in addition to aerial coverage of these areas,” Bahra, the head of the Syrian National Coalition told the pan-Arab daily Al Hayat newspaper.

Washington and its Arab allies opened the air assault against the extremist group in Syria on Sept. 23, striking military facilities, training camps, heavy weapons and oil installations. The campaign expands upon the airstrikes the United States has been conducting against the militants in Iraq since early August.

Also Tuesday, an international human rights group said Lebanese authorities are failing to protect Syrians, most of them refugees, living in Lebanon from attacks by individuals or groups. Such assaults have intensified since the Aug. 2 cross border attack during which Muslim militants captured 20 Lebanese soldiers and policemen, said the Human Rights Watch. Since then, three soldiers have been killed by their captors.

The attacks against Syrians are taking place in a climate of indifference and discrimination by officials, the New York-based group said, adding the violence appears in some cases to be attempts to expel Syrians from specific neighborhoods or to enforce curfews, it said.