MAKHMOUR, Kurdistan Region—Peshmerga forces captured two strategic villages near the town of Makhmour Wednesday morning, killing several Islamist militants and destroying two car bombs before reaching their target.
Sultan Abdullah and Tal Shaiir are two of the biggest villages on the Nineveh plains. They were captured by the Islamic State (ISIS) last summer and previously held by the Iraqi army.
The ISIS militants tried to stop the Peshmerga advance on the villages with a truck-bomb but the Kurdish forces opened fire and blew it up before it reached them.
After some initial fighting most of the ISIS militants fled both villages, but several of them hid inside the homes and put up a fierce resistance.
A group of Peshmerga soldiers took position on a hilltop and killed them with mortar shells and machine-gun fire.
As the Peshmerga eventually entered the village, we found the dead bodies of a few ISIS militants lying among the ruins.
My camera crew were busy filming the wreckage when at that moment two wounded militants who had played dead stood up and opened fire. But the Peshmerga took them out with hand-grenades after about five minutes of fierce fighting.
The commander of the Peshmerga forces said that by controlling these two villages the Kurds have now turned their frontline into one which was until today separated by the ISIS presence in the area.
“We are now controlling all the villages, roads and hills,” said the commander. “ISIS is gone from here. They should forget about this place.”
The commander said that taking Sultan Abdullah and Tal Shaiir would also push the threat of ISIS further away from many Kurdish villages.
Minutes later as the Peshmerga soldiers were inspecting the villages, the ISIS militants dispatched a bomb-laden Hummer towards the village driven by a suicide bomber, but a middle-aged Peshmerga soldier stood on the road and destroyed it with a Rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) on his shoulder.
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