The WSJ reports,"Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's authorization of air support came after the Kurdish forces, known as Peshmerga, lost a string of towns over the weekend to the militant group, which calls itself Islamic State. The Peshmerga had held off the insurgents in northwestern Iraq without central Iraqi government forces for nearly two months.
The Peshmerga's losses shocked officials, sparking new cooperation between two mutually hostile authorities—the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government, or KRG, in Erbil.
While Iraqi officials and analysts said they expected the security cooperation to focus on the immediate crisis, the move also could help to ease Iraq's tense political environment. Iraq's Shiite political blocs are negotiating on who to nominate as prime minister, a decision due constitutionally by Aug. 8.
Some analysts say any jointly coordinated success could also precipitate more American military support in Iraq, which both Baghdad and the Kurdish government have requested.
The new Islamic State offensive in northwest Iraq drove out thousands of residents and threatened a religious minority, the Yazidis, a small Kurdish-speaking community with a pre-Islamic faith long targeted by al Qaeda. The insurgents blew up two Yazidi shrines and rounded up some residents who hadn't managed to flee, Iraqi news agencies reported.
Iraqi Air Force jets started bombing targets in the town of Sinjar, west of Mosul near the Syrian border, and the broader area on Monday afternoon, Peshmerga spokesman Jabar Yawer said in an interview. The jets flew from and returned to Baghdad.
Monday's counteroffensive left the Kurdish fighters in control of Iraq's largest dam in Mosul, Mr. Yawer said, after Islamic State militants tried to seize it in their effort to control resources.
Iraqi and U.S. officials are concerned that any more territorial gains for the extremist group, an al Qaeda spinoff formerly known as ISIS, would help it consolidate its intended regional state.
"We have entered a new stage," said Falah Mustafa Bakir, the KRG's foreign minister, in a telephone interview. "We are on the offensive now and we need assistance to fight"Islamic State.
In a statement posted online Sunday, Islamic State called its attack against the Peshmerga an effort to "open up the border" between Nineveh province, whose capital Mosul the group seized in June, and Dohuk, the Kurdish-controlled province to its north.
Its fighters have reached "the border triangle between Iraq, Syria, and Turkey," another statement said. "May God almighty allow his mujahedeen to liberate the whole region.""
