Iraq suffers surge of displaced as tit-for-tat battles rage

Iraq's Kurdish security forces repelled Sunni insurgents across the country's northern province of Nineveh on Tuesday, retaking control of a border town near Syria, as thousands of families fled their homes near Mosul, a provincial security source said.
Kurdish forces, known locally as the Peshmerga, clashed with the Islamic State militant group, an al-Qaida offshoot, and recaptured the town of Rabia, which lies near the Syrian border. The Kurdish fighters seized the town's border crossing point, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
In a separate incident, Peshmerga forces backed by tanks, armored vehicles and artillery waged an all-out offensive on Zumar, some 70 km northwest of Mosul, to expel Islamic State militants from the town, which was overrun by insurgents early Saturday, the source said.
Peshmerga forces and the Islamist militants also clashed near the town of Sinjar, some 100 km west of Mosul, the source said, adding that the battles are continuing as the Peshmerga seize some of Sinjar's suburbs and some villages around the town.
Islamic State militants rammed the town of Talkif, some 10 km north of Mosul, with dozens of mortar rounds as the militants prepare to storm the predominately Christian town, the source added.
The mortar barrage on Talkif, which started after midnight Tuesday, compelled more than 2,000 families to flee their homes to safer areas, the source said, adding that the bombings killed at least one civilian and left some six others wounded, along with damaging many houses.
Two days ago, the Islamic State militants captured the town of Sinjar, forcing thousands of families, mostly from the Yazidi minority, to leave their homes and take refuge near the nearby Sinjar mountain as well as the city of Zakho in the semi- autonomous region of Kurdistan.
Earlier on Tuesday, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said in a statement that up to 40 from displaced families of Yazidi minority who have fled to the nearby mountain are reported to have died.
"According to official reports received by UNICEF, these children from the Yazidi minority died as a direct consequence of violence, displacement and dehydration over the past two days," the statement said.
"Families who fled the area are in immediate need of urgent assistance, including up to 25,000 children who are now stranded in mountains surrounding Sinjar and are in dire need of humanitarian aid, including drinking water and sanitation services, " the UNICEF added.
The Yazidi minority is primarily Kurdish. The religion of Yazidis incorporates elements of many faiths, as a result of some of their beliefs and common misperceptions about their religion, many Muslims and non-Muslims have come to see Yazidis as "infidels. " This has led to violent attacks by extremist Islamist groups against the minority.
There are about 600,000 Yazidis remaining in Iraq with roughly 80 percent of them living in the towns of Sinjar and Bashika in Nineveh province.
Since early in June, when the Islamic State conquered Mosul, fears have been raised surrounding the fate of Iraq's ethnic and religious minorities. Christian families began to flee the city about a week ago after the group issued an ultimatum to Iraqi Christians living there to either convert to Islam, pay a tax named "Jizya", or face death by the sword.
Tuesday battles in Nineveh province came a day after the announcement of Jabbar Yawar, the secretary general of the Peshmerga Ministry, who said that Kurdish fighters recaptured the town of Wanna, about 70 km north of Mosul, as part of their military campaign against the Islamic State militants, who have seized several towns and Iraq's largest dam on the Tigris River in the past days.
Yawar said that the Peshmerga are preparing for a major attack to take control of the towns of Zumar and Sinjar and others recently seized by the Sunni militants.
The Mosul Dam, Wanna, Zumar and Sinjar are part of the disputed areas which are ethnically mixed with Kurds, Arabs, Turkmens and others. The Kurds have demanded to expand their autonomous region in northern Iraq to include the oil-rich province of Kirkuk and other areas in the Iraqi provinces of Nineveh, Salahudin and Diyala, but their move is fiercely opposed by Baghdad government.
Early in June, the Peshmerga took control of the disputed areas, including the northern city of Kirkuk after the Iraqi security forces abandoned their bases following the Islamic State's June 10 blitzkrieg across Iraq in which the al-Qaida offshoot and other Sunni militant groups seized large swathes of territories in predominantly Sunni provinces.