BAGHDAD: An Iraqi government air strike on a Sharia court set up by Islamic State (IS) militants in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul killed 60 people on Wednesday, the office of the prime minister’s military spokesman said.

The militant judge who ran the court was among those killed, the spokesman said.

The Sunni militants routinely hand down sentences such as beheadings.

Hospital officials and witnesses said earlier that the air strike had killed 50 people in a makeshift prison set up by the IS, which seized large chunks of Iraq in June.

Meanwhile, Kurdish forces attacked IS fighters near the regional capital of Arbil in northern Iraq in a change of tactics supported by the Iraqi central government to try to break the Islamists’ momentum.

The attack 40km southwest of Arbil came after the Sunni militants inflicted a humiliating defeat on the Kurds on Sunday with a rapid advance through three towns, prompting Iraq’s prime minister to order his air force for the first time to back the Kurdish forces.

“We have changed our tactics from being defensive to being offensive. Now we are clashing with the Islamic State in Makhmur,” said Jabbar Yawar, secretary-general of the ministry in charge of the Kurdish peshmerga fighters.

The location of the clashes puts the IS fighters closer than they have ever been to the Kurdish semi-autonomous region since they swept through northern Iraq almost unopposed in June. Yawar said the Kurds had re-established military cooperation with Baghdad.

Ties had been strained with the Shia-led government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki over oil, budgets and land. But the dramatic weekend offensive by the Sunni militants — who seized more towns, a fifth oilfield and reached Iraq’s biggest dam — prompted them to bury their differences.

Published in Dawn, August 7th, 2014