Kurdish security forces clashed with a breakaway al-Qaeda group that’s trying to extend its control in northern Iraq by seizing the country’s largest dam. Fighting is raging near the Mosul dam, and it is a “no man’s land,” Sheikh Ahmed Al-Simmari, a resident of the nearby city of Rabia’ah, said in a phone interview. The Kurds retook the Rabia’ah border post with Syria and the nearby town of Sinjar from the militants after fierce fighting late yesterday, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of the groups that governs the largely autonomous region of Kurdish northern Iraq, said on its website. Islamic State, which was previously known as Islamic State in Iraq and Levant, has seized territory throughout Iraq and Syria and declared its own self-styled caliphate, highlighting the central government’s inability to ensure security under Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The group this week seized two oil fields and predominantly Kurdish […]