Kurdish forces mount counter-attack to fend off ISIL militia

Kurdish peshmerga forces have mounted a series of counter-attacks on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, to take control of Mahmudiya, a volatile town on Mosul's border with Syria.

Earlier Tuesday, clashes intensified to fend off the ISIL militia, who still has control of Mosul, Duhok, Sinjar, and Rabia in Iraq's Kurdish enclave.

Contrary to their hostilities in the past, Kurdish fighters have been backed by 400 militants from Syrian-based Popular Protection Units, or YPG, the armed wing of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, in Syria.

When the coalition of Kurdish forces surrounded Mahmudiya, ISIL sent a number of militants to the region for a reprisal. The fierce fighting is still underway in Mahmudia, two kilometers to Rabia town, according to Kurdish peshmerga.

Special forces, under the command of Mesrur Barzani, the Kurdish enclaves' intelligence chief, have been deployed around Mahmudiya. A huge plume of black smoke that soared above the town displayed the severity of the clashes in the Kurdish entity.

The Kurdish regional government has demanded highly-explosive arms from the US government, while thousands of additional fighters have been dispatched to the town. Kurdish forces need to take control of the towns of Mahmudiya and then Rabia, respectively, in order to push ISIL back from Sinjar.

The ISIL-led militants seized control of the town of Sinjar near the city of Mosul on Sunday after fierce clashes, which saw peshmerga forces withdraw from the region they had protected since insurgents overran Mosul and surrounding localities in June.

Tension has remained high in Iraq after the ISIL-led militants, backed by tribal fighters, seized Iraq's second-largest city Mosul on June 10 and captured a number of other cities in the north, including Tikrit and Tal Afar.