ISIS fighters destroy key bridge - Kurds

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ISIS fighters destroy key bridge - Kurds

ISIS militants have destroyed a bridge they recently used to assault Iraq's oil-rich Kirkuk city -- a possible attempt to hinder a counterattack against them, a Kurdish political and military leader said Saturday.

The news came as coalition airstrikes again pounded ISIS positions in Iraq and Syria on Saturday, including in the northern Iraq's Mosul, where a CNN crew from a distance saw at least a dozen blasts in a city that the Sunni Muslim extremist group captured about eight months ago.
About 30 kilometers southwest of Kirkuk, ISIS late Friday blew up a bridge that helps connect an ISIS-held area to the city, said Saman Jabari, a senior Kurdish political leader who also commands Kurdish Peshmerga troops near Kirkuk.

ISIS had used the bridge to reach the Kirkuk area in a surprise attack on January 30, Jabari said.

Kurdish troops have counter-attacked since.
In Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, aircraft from a U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition attacked ground targets Saturday. A CNN crew watching from Kurdish positions to the southeast of Mosul saw at least 12 blasts and heard jets streaking overhead.

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Kurdish forces say the frequency and intensity of airstrikes on Mosul have increased sharply since Tuesday, when ISIS released a video showing its fighters burning to death a Jordanian captive pilot, Lt. Moath al-Kasasbeh, who was captured in December after his jet crashed in Syria.

Airstrikes also hit ISIS targets near the terror group's de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria, on Saturday, anti-ISIS activists there said.

At least 10 explosions were reported Saturday in Hazema, north of Raqqa, and six other strikes happened in Tabqa to the west, the activist group "Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently" said on Twitter.

Last year, ISIS, or the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, declared it had established a "caliphate" spanning the two nations. Since then, it has gone on a murderous rampage that has included beheadings of foreigners. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Syrians have fled areas it has seized.