US: Iraqis repel most significant Islamic State attack in 7 months
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Iraqi security forces backed by coalition warplanes repelled two major Islamic State offensives this week in combat that showed Iraqi troops increasingly are becoming "solid fighting forces," a US military official said on Friday.
In the most significant Islamic State military operation in Iraq in seven months, a battalion-sized unit of some 500 Islamic State militants attacked the Kurdish forward line in northern Iraq, penetrating it in three locations before being stopped and repelled, US Army Colonel Steve Warren told a briefing. The attack came a day after a company-sized unit of Islamic State fighters using truck bombs tried to break through Iraqi lines to Ramadi, briefly seizing the city's Palestine bridge before being stopped and repelled, said Warren, a spokesman for the US-led military coalition.
