In the village of Mula Abdula, a flock of blackbirds and starlings alights on the remains of a pillar that used to sustain a house recently smashed by airstrikes. Thick columns of smoke belch from two oil wells, set on fire by IS militants when they were driven out of the area after briefly overrunning it on Jan. 29.
Although the militants have not made any gains in Northern Iraq since the airstrikes began in August 2014, they are still attacking peshmerga forces regularly and mounted a major offensive around Kirkuk in January, shortly after suffering humiliating defeats in the Syrian town of Kobani and near the Mosul Dam.
Taking advantage of dense fog, the militants managed to cross the canal, killing at least 30 peshmerga fighters, including two generals, before Kurdish reinforcements, including an elite counterterrorism squad, drove them back.
"We kept shooting at them but they kept coming," said Goran Nasraddin, one of the few peshmerga fighters from his unit to have survived the assault, in which he sustained multiple injuries. "I counted around eight IS fighters who fell as I fired my gun, but nothing stopped them.”
When Nasraddin realized all his co-fighters had fallen, he hid in a cesspit for 12 hours until IS militants were pushed back. "I immediately put my phone on silent. I knew I would be beheaded if they captured me alive," Nasraddin told Al-Monitor. By the time he emerged, his parents had already given him up for dead and dug a grave for him on a hill surrounded by pine trees in his village.
The bodies of at least 70 IS militants were recovered from the battlefield, but Kurds say over 200 militants were killed in the battle.
Defending Kirkuk proves difficult
The Kurds took full control of Kirkuk in June 2014, meeting no resistance as the Iraqi army melted away. But the oil-rich city is proving less easy to defend.
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