In northern Iraq, casualties as Kurds push back Islamic State

(The Christian Science Monitor) Bulldozers equipped with steel plates welded over their cockpits to thwart snipers are digging earth berms and trenches here, creating the new front lines of northern Iraq. 

Kurdish peshmerga units began a week ago pushing beyond a line 20 miles southwest of the oil city of Kirkuk, which Kurds have held since last summer when Sunni militants swept into Iraq from Syria. The Kurdish fighters' aim is to squeeze the self-described Islamic State between them and a parallel offensive by the Iraqi Army and allied Shiite militia to the south that has encircled Tikrit.

The multi-pronged fight is a major test for reconstituted Iraqi forces. When IS jihadists seized the northern city of Mosul last year, entire Iraqi Army divisions disintegrated. Today, the momentum appears to have shifted: U.S. officials estimate that IS today has lost 25 percent of the territory—nearly 5,000 square miles—it held at its peak last August, when it declared an Islamic caliphate.