Kurdish Peshmerga forces "will not retreat from areas retaken" from Islamic State militants in Iraq, Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani said on Wednesday, according to local Rudaw TV station.
Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces attacked an Islamic State-held town northeast of Mosul on Monday, trying to clear a pocket of militants outside the city while Iraqi troops wage a fierce urban war with the jihadists in its eastern neighbourhoods.
Abbas Ali wept as his wife slowly pushed him in his wheelchair out of their village in northern Iraq, a risky escape along a route where Islamic State snipers three days earlier had shot dead a couple seeking freedom from their rule.
US Secretary of Defence Ashton Carter arrived in Iraq's autonomous region of Kurdistan on Sunday to review the ongoing military offensive to retake the jihadist bastion of Mosul.
A booby-trapped drone launched by Islamic State militants killed two Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and wounded two French soldiers earlier this month north of the IS-controlled city of Mosul, Kurdish officials said on Wednesday.
An Iraqi Kurdish reporter was killed and another wounded on Sunday during a military operation against the Islamic State group in northern Iraq, officials said.
Iraq's Kurdish peshmerga forces on Sunday launched an offensive to retake areas east of Mosul, the Islamic State's main hub in the country, a statement said.
Iraq on Saturday denied claims made by Ankara that its soldiers on a controversial base near the northern city of Mosul killed 18 jihadists after coming under attack.
