ASIA/IRAQ - The Peshmerga and the coalition raid reject the jihadists outside the village of Telskuf

Telskuf (Agenzia Fides) - The offensive of about 150 jihadists of the Islamic State (Daesh) who yesterday, May 3, had attacked Telskuf, a town in the Nineveh Plain where before August 2014 about 12 thousand Christians lived, lasted a few hours. The Kurdish Peshmerga militia, supported by air raids of anti-Daesh international coalition headed by the US, already took on the same day of Tuesday control of what currently looks like a deserted city. Clashes between Kurdish militias and affiliates of Daesh caused several casualties on both sides. The fallen Peshmerga soldiers are at least three. A statement from the US-led coalition, relaunched by Kurdish sources consulted by Agenzia Fides, reports that a US soldier died in the clashes with Daesh which occurred in Telskuf district.
The jihadist attack in Telskuf fell within the broader offensive carried out by militants of Daesh to open the gates in the north-Iraqi areas presided by the Peshmerga, after the Kurdish armed forces had achieved important successes in clashes with jihadists, regaining important villages in Kirkuk area.
Telskuf currently looks like a ghost town. Its inhabitants abandoned it in droves in the night between 6 and 7 August 2014, when tens of thousands of Christians of the villages in the Nineveh Plain fled before the advance of the militias of the Islamic State. The jihadists withdrew from Telskuf in the following months, but the city remained deserted, and Christian families only go back to celebrate funerals and bury their dead in the cemetery. Some citizens who fled Telskuf have found refuge in the nearby town of Alqosh. (GV) (Agenzia Fides 04/05/2016).

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