KNOWING YOUR ALLIES:

Ties between Israel and the Kurds run deep. A Mossad officer named Sagi Chori was sent to help his close friend, the late iconic Kurdish leader Mulla Mustafa Barzani, manage the Kurds' battles against the Iraqi army in the 1960s. There have also been persistent reports of Israel training Kurdish commandos. Nationalist Kurds tend to see Israel as a role model for an independent Kurdistan: a small nation surrounded by enemies and bolstered by a strategic partnership with the United States.

IS fighters retreated as the peshmerga closed in on the town of Sinjar, south of the mountain that bears the same name, and Tal Afar, to its east. If successful, the move would significantly alter the map of the Islamic State group's self-declared cross-border caliphate and isolate its Mosul hub.

The autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region's troops reached the flanks of Mount Sinjar with food and other aid three days after launching a vast operation in the region, backed by US-led coalition airstrikes.

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