The Islamic State had reportedly taken the Christian town of Qaraqosh near Mosul, the Mosul Dam, and two villages...
The Islamic State had reportedly taken the Christian town of Qaraqosh near Mosul, the Mosul Dam, and two villages -- Ghwar and Mahmour -- situated only 30km from the Iraqi Kurdish capital Irbil.It is known that On August 2, Islamic State fighters seized the largely Yazidi town of Sinjar and on August 3, they captured Zumar, Wana, and the Ain Zalah oil fields and refinery. By all accounts, these gains are extraordinary and deeply threatening not only to Iraqi long-term stability but also to the security prospects of the wider region.
Mosul dam, the largest in Iraq,which sits on the Tigris River and is about 30 miles northwest of the city of Mosul, provides electricity to Mosul and controls the water supply for a large amount of territory. A report published in 2007 by the United States government, which had been involved with work on the dam, warned that should it fail, a 65-foot wave of water could be unleashed across areas of northern Iraq is also among land gains by ISIS today
The advance forced thousands of residents of Iraq’s biggest Christian town to flee, fearing they would be subjected to the same demands the Sunni militants made in other captured areas - leave, convert to Islam or face death.
One of the U.N.O officials announced that UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said, adding that 200,000 had fled the fighting.
Most of the civilians are believed to be members of the Yazidi minority, which, like other ethnic and religious minorities in the area, has already been the target of abductions by ISIS forces, according to the United Nations. Reports had reached Erbil that more than 200,000 Yazidis had left Sinjar with nothing except what they were wearing. Yazidis had asked the United Nations and humanitarian organizations to airdrop supplies to them because they could not leave the mountains without being intercepted by ISIS forces.
As the fighting expanded in the north, violence also unfolded elsewhere. In Kirkuk, a northern city long divided between Arabs and Kurds that is now under Kurdish control, two explosions struck near a Shiite mosque, killing 11 people and wounding more than 50 others. In Baghdad, a suicide car bomber struck in Kadhimiya, a Shiite district that is home to an important shrine, killing 15 and wounding 25 others, according to a hospital official and the local police.
