Kurdish forces said they retook two important parts of northern Iraq on Sunday, reversing gains by Islamist militants while U.S. warplanes conducted a third day of airstrikes on the insurgents. The advance of the radical Sunni group Islamic State into the semiautonomous region last week sparked a humanitarian disaster and prompted the first U.S. military intervention in Iraq in three years. Kurdish fighters overtook Islamic State positions in Makhmur District, a region north of the city of Kirkuk, and the nearby town of Gwair. The fighters, who until recently had called themselves the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, also known as ISIS or ISIL, had taken over the two towns last week as part of a broader push toward Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish region. The U.S. State Department on Sunday relocated “a limited number” of staff from the American embassy in Baghdad and the U.S. consulate […]