Jim Muir at the BBC - Islamic HQ falls to Iraqi Kurds:
Thousands of Peshmerga Kurdish guerrillas have overrun the main headquarters of a group of Islamic radicals in the mountains of north-eastern Iraq.Bye bye.
The Ansar al-Islam base at Biara fell several hours after the Peshmerga forces launched an offensive at dawn on Friday.
A senior official of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the Peshmerga guerrilla group which carried out the operation in conjunction with US special forces, said that around 70 Ansar al-Islam adherents had been killed and that all their main centres had been overrun.
He said the survivors had fled into the mountains towards the border with Iran and he predicted that the area would be completely clear of them within 24 hours.
The operation also included American air support called in by the special forces who have been co-ordinating on the ground.
