The Kurds were also trying to rescue the tens of thousands of Yazidis who are trapped on a mountain by the Islamic State and are quickly dying of thirst.
BARTELLA, Iraq — Sunni extremists repelled efforts by Kurdish peshmerga forces on Wednesday to push them back in areas east of Mosul in northern Iraq and shelled a predominantly Christian village there in what appeared to be a renewed push along the Kurdish border to take ground, control oil fields and water resources and expel minority groups.
As artillery shells landed in the village of Qara Qosh, which is largely Christian, and plumes of smoke from the explosions drifted across the dry Nineveh plain just 25 miles from the Kurdish capital, Erbil, panicked residents fled in cars and pickups piled with their belongings, creating long lines at checkpoints guarded by the Kurdish peshmerga. […]
Ever since Sunni militants with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria took over Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, on June 10, Iraqis have feared that Baghdad, to the south, is the insurgents’ goal. But in recent weeks, ISIS has concentrated on trying to push the Kurds back from areas where Sunnis also live along the border between Kurdistan and Nineveh Province. It has taken on the powerful Kurdish militias, which were thought to be a bulwark against the advance, and which control huge oil reserves in Kurdistan and broader parts of northern Iraq.
By late Wednesday night, Kurdish television was reporting that two Kurdish settlements less than 20 miles west of Erbil — Mahmour and Gwar — had fallen to ISIS.