WarSclerotic

ISIS militants seize western Iraqi town, menace base housing U.S. personnel

By Laura Smith-Spark, CNN

Updated 11:58 AM ET, Fri February 13, 2015

via ISIS militants seize western Iraqi town, menace base housing U.S. personnel – CNN.com.

(CNN)ISIS militants took full control of a western Iraqi town early Friday, security officials told CNN, bringing them within a few miles of an air base housing U.S. military personnel.

The extremist group took al-Baghdadi, west of Ramadi, and now they’re closing in on the strategic Ayn al-Assad Air Base, only about 15 kilometers (9 miles) away, the security officials said.

Iraqi forces there are calling for reinforcements. A U.S. defense official told CNN that no evacuations have been planned from the base.

That western front is just one of many where ISIS forces are on the move.

CNN’s Phil Black, in northern Iraq, said Friday that Kurdish Peshmerga fighters were starting to move from the north toward the city of Sinjar, held by ISIS since the summer.
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The militants’ seizure of the city provoked a major humanitarian crisis as its ethnic minority Yazidi population fled onto the rocky slopes of Mount Sinjar, where many became trapped without food and water.

The Kurdish fighters are on the offensive but face a long, difficult battle to win back the city from ISIS, whose fighters are firmly in control there.

ISIS attacked Peshmerga fighters in Sinjar on Thursday, as well as Kurdish forces positioned north of Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, and the town of Ba’shiqa, east of Mosul.

But it’s in Iraq’s west where ISIS militants have the momentum over the Iraqi army and Sunni tribesmen opposing them.

‘No direct threat’ to U.S. personnel

The ISIS fighters seized Al-Baghdadi, northwest of the capital of Baghdad, on Friday after attacking from three directions against Iraqi government forces, the security officials told CNN.

Ayn al-Assad, the largest military base in western Anbar province still under government control, is also where U.S. instructors train Iraqi pilots.

Already, the air base is taking sporadic indirect fire from militants using rocket launchers and mortars, the officials said.

Two security officials in the Anbar provincial office told CNN that security forces inside Ayn al-Assad killed eight suicide bombers Friday who were trying to breach the air base’s perimeter from the direction of Al-Baghdadi.

A statement issued by U.S. Central Command said the attack had been directed against an Iraqi army facility on the base and that the Iraqi forces had killed all eight militants.

“Coalition forces were several kilometers from the attack and at no stage were they under direct threat from this action,” it said.