(MENAFN- Arab Times) KIRKUK, Iraq, Jan 31, (Agencies): Iraqi Kurdish forces and police retook an oil field in Kirkuk province Saturday that was seized by the Islamic State group overnight, and freed 24 workers who had been taken captive, officers said. "Peshmerga forces and police cleared the Khubbaz (oil) field a little while ago and were able to enter it after surrounding it for hours," police Brigadier General Sarhad Qader said of the fighting, adding that they also retook eight villages.
IS had moved into the oil field Friday night and seized 24 workers, who were freed after they withdrew, peshmerga Major General Westa Rasul said. A police colonel said their liberation was delayed because of fears that the bunker where they were held had been rigged with explosives.
During the fighting on Saturday, a sniper killed peshmerga Major General Hussein Mansur, Colonel Kawa Gharib said. A peshmerga major was also killed and four more fighters wounded when an explosives- rigged house blew up.
Mansur was the second senior Kurdish officer to die in two days, after Brigadier General Shirko Rauf was killed Friday during a major IS attack in Kirkuk province. The US-led anti-IS coalition carried out 10 air strikes in Kirkuk province from Friday to Saturday, hitting IS units and vehicles and buildings used by the jihadists. The bulk of Iraq's oil output comes from fields in the south, but the government is counting on production of 300,000 barrels per day from fields in Kirkuk in its 2015 budget, so any major loss of output would be damaging.
Last June, IS overran southwestern areas of Kirkuk during a lightning offensive that saw it capture much of Iraq's Sunni Arab heartland north and west of Baghdad. That offensive presented both an opportunity for territorial expansion and an existential threat to the three-province autonomous Kurdish region. Several Iraqi divisions collapsed in the early days of the offensive, clearing the way for the Kurds to take control of a swathe of disputed territory they have long wanted to incorporate into their region over Baghdad's objections. But after driving south towards Baghdad, IS turned its attention to the Kurds, pushing them back towards their regional capital Arbil in a move that helped spark US strikes against the jihadists.
Bolstered by the air strikes as well as international advisers and trainers, Kurdish forces have clawed back significant ground from IS. The conflict is redrawing some of the de facto internal boundaries of Iraq in favour of broader Kurdish control in the north. Meanwhile, the Islamic State group has acknowledged for the first time that its fighters have been defeated in the Syrian town of Kobani and vowed to attack the town again. In a video released by the pro-IS Aamaq News Agency late Friday, two fighters said the airstrikes by the US-led coalition were the main reason why IS fighters were forced to withdraw from Kobani.
On Monday, activists and Kurdish officials said the town was almost cleared of IS fighters, who once held nearly half of the town. One IS fighter vowed to defeat the main Kurdish militia in Syria, the People's Protection Units known as the YPG, calling them "rats." The failure to capture Kobani was a major blow to the extremists.
Their hopes for an easy victory dissolved into a costly siege under withering airstrikes by coalition forces and an assault by Kurdish militiamen. "A while ago we retreated a bit from Ayn al-Islam because of the bombardment and the killing of some brothers," said one masked fighter, using the group's preferred name for Kobani. He spoke Arabic with a north African accent.
The United States and several Arab allies have been striking Islamic State positions in Syria since Sept 23. The campaign aims to push back the jihadi organization after it took over about a third of Iraq and Syria and declared the captured territory a new caliphate. "The Islamic State will stay. Say that to (President Barack) Obama," said the fighter, pointing his finger toward destruction on the edge of Kobani.
The Islamic State group launched an offensive on the Kobani region in mid- September capturing more than 300 Kurdish villages and parts of the town. As a result of the airstrikes and stiff Kurdish resistance, IS began retreating few weeks ago, losing more than 1,000 fighters, according to activists. More than 200,000 Kurds were forced from their homes.
Many fled to neighboring Turkey. Another fighter, also speaking in Arabic, said while standing on a road with a green sign with "Ayn al-Islam" sprayed on it: "The warplanes did not leave any construction. They destroyed everything, so we had to withdraw and the rats advanced." "The warplanes were bombarding us night and day.
They bombarded everything, even motorcycles," the fighter said. Outgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in an interview on Friday the United States might eventually need to send non-combat ground troops to Iraq to help turn back Islamic State forces. Hagel, who announced his resignation under pressure in November, told CNN all options must be considered in Iraq, including sending troops for non-combat roles such as gathering intelligence and locating Islamic State targets. "I think it may require a forward deployment of some of our troops ...," he said. "I would say we're not there yet. Whether we get there or not, I don't know." Hagel's comments echoed testimony by General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to Congress last fall when he said US troops might have to take a larger role on the ground in Iraq. Such a deployment would be in addition to the 4,500 US troops already committed to training and advising roles in Iraq. Hagel also said he had conflicts with White House officials on releasing prisoners from the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. As secretary of defense, Hagel authorized which prisoners would be released and when.
He told CNN that the White House did not agree with his cautious approach, saying there were disagreements on "the pace of the releases." Asked by CNN if he had been pressured, Hagel said, "we've had a lot of conversations" with the White House and Congress on the releases. In other news, a US-led coalition air strike killed a chemical weapons specialist with the Islamic State group in Iraq who once worked for Saddam Hussein, US military officers said Friday.
The air raid carried out last Saturday near Mosul took out Abu Malik, whose training "provided the terrorist group with expertise to pursue a chemical weapons capability," the military said in a statement. Malik had worked at a chemical weapons production plant under Saddam's regime and later forged an affiliation with Al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2005, before joining the extremist IS group, according to Central Command.
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