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MAKHMUR, Iraq — Ten kilometres from Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham front lines, in a dusty, impoverished Kurdish town where the marauding extremists had been expelled several weeks ago with help from U.S. warplanes, locals expressed immense gratitude Friday after it was confirmed that Canada was going to send six RCAF fighter-bombers to join the international air campaign against the jihadists.

“I know all about what Canada is doing. You had a government minister here recently and he made us some promises,” shopkeeper Behar Namiq said in an apparent reference to a visit to the Kurdish region two weeks ago by John Baird, the minister of foreign affairs.

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“It was very good what the Americans did here before and it will be very good what the Canadians will soon do in Iraq.”

Hearing clashes as ISIS fighters attacked the western outskirts of the town, Mr. Namiq said that he and every other adult male had fled into nearby hills, but only after first urgently sending their women and children to the relative safety of the Kurdish capital of Erbil, which is about a 40-minute drive away.