ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Kurdish Peshmerga forces trying to protect Christians reported clashes with Islamic insurgents in northern Iraq, as militants who have been on a territorial rampage since more than a fortnight ago were reported to have taken a town only an hour from Baghdad.
Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary William Hague arrived in Baghdad Thursday on an unannounced visit, days after US Secretary of State John Kerry was in the Iraqi capital to urge the embattled Shiite-led government to quickly form an inclusive government.
Just before Hague landed in Baghdad, the Reuters news agency reported that the rebels, led by the jihadi Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), had captured a town only an hour away from the Iraqi capital, after gains in the Mansouriyat al-Jabal area.
In northern Nineveh province, Kurdish Peshmerga forces were attacked by ISIS fighters while trying to dig defensive trenches to protect Christians and Shabak Kurds in the Al-Hamdaniya district.
Intelligence and other officials said that three Peshmerga soldiers were wounded in fighting that began Wednesday, with casualties also among the militants.
Also Wednesday, a roadside bomb killed a Peshmerga and wounded 12 others near the town of Rabia on the Syria-Iraq border.
Christians in Nineveh have been fleeing in large numbers, mostly for the autonomous Kurdistan Region, since insurgents who include ISIS and loyalists of Saddam Hussein’s ousted regime captured the Nineveh capital of Mosul, the country’s second-largest city, more than a fortnight ago.
Since then Peshmerga forces, who moved into Kurdish-populated areas outside the Kurdistan Region’s official borders to take over positions abandoned by retreating Iraqi army forces, have reported sporadic clashes with the rebels.
An intelligence official told Rudaw that the ISIS fighters were pushed back by Kurdish forces and defeated on three fronts in Al-Hamdaniya.
Bashar Kiki, the provincial council chief, said the fighting lasted two hours, stopping after mediation from tribal and religious officials. But Peshmerga sources said that clashes were ongoing.
Kiki added that six mortars landed inside Al-Hamdaniya, one of them hitting a house but causing no casualties.
“A number of Christian families fled to Erbil because of the clashes,” Kiki said.
Meanwhile the intelligence official, who did not want to be identified, said that many people were continuing to flee to the Kurdistan Region.
“The ISIS has cut off water supply to Hamdaniya for three days, since the militants are in control of the water station,” he said. “Many people fled to Erbil and Duhok today because of mortars and Katyusha rockets landing in the town,” he added.
Over the past two weeks there have been sporadic clashes between Peshmerga forces and ISIS fighters in the area. But despite the heavy concentration of Kurdish and ISIS forces in the province, both sides have largely practiced a kind of undeclared truce.
The deployment of the elite Kurdish Zeravani forces in the Nineveh plains has helped many residents stay in their villages, unlike much of the population of Mosul, which fled the city at the outbreak of hostilities between Iraqi forces and ISIS.
The Nineveh Plain has the largest population of Christians in Iraq, where Christian communities have been largely devastated due to years of fighting and emigration. ISIS has especially targeted Christians across Iraq.
Large parts of Nineveh lie in so-called “disputed territories,” which are claimed both by the autonomous Kurds and the embattled Arab-led government in Baghdad.
