SINJAR, northwest Iraq,— Iraqi Kurdish forces entered Sinjar on Friday in a major operation to retake the northern Yazidi town from the Islamic State jihadist group, an AFP journalist reported.
Peshmerga and Yazidi forces claimed full control over Sinjar on Friday, as Operation Free Sinjar entered its second day.
Kurdish fighters are in control of the center of the strategic Iraqi town after taking it from the IS group, witnesses say.
Kurdish peshmerga forces secured several strategic facilities in the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar on Friday as part of an offensive against Islamic State militants that could provide critical momentum in efforts to defeat the jihadist group.
“IS defeated and on the run,” the Kurdistan regional security council said in a tweet.
The council said in a tweet that Kurdish peshmerga forces entered Sinjar “from all directions” on Friday to begin clearing the northern Iraqi town of Islamic State militants.
It said the peshmerga had secured Sinjar silo, cement factory, hospital and several other public buildings.
AP journalists saw the fighters raise a Kurdish flag and fire off celebratory gunfire in the center of the town Friday morning. Other sources said that the Kurds take full control of Sinjar.
Heavy bursts of gunfire could be heard inside the town, as fighters filed down the hill overlooking the town from the north, some with rocket-propelled grenades on their shoulders, said a Reuters witness.
Kurdish forces moved on foot into the town, where many houses and shops have been destroyed, and damaged cars sat in the street.
Jihadist graffiti, including “The Islamic State”, had been painted on some houses, and barrels apparently containing explosives had been left behind.
The major operation, which is led by the autonomous Kurdish region’s peshmerga forces and also involves fighters from the Yazidi minority that has been brutally targeted by IS, succeeded in cutting a key jihadist supply line through the town to neighbouring Syria on Thursday.
The Kurdish forces include Iraqi Peshmerga forces, the Turkey-based Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), the Syrian Kurdistan-based People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Yazidi YBS forces. Some 5,000 Yazidi fighters have been mobilized under the command of the Kurdish Peshmerga to take the battle to IS.
Anti-IS forces then deployed around the town and prepared to move in.
Permanently cutting the supply line, which links IS’s Iraq hub Mosul with areas it holds in Syria, would hamper the jihadists’ ability to move fighters, equipment and other supplies between the two countries.
“By seizing Sinjar, we’ll be able to cut that line of communication, which we believe will constrict (IS’s) ability to resupply themselves, and is a critical first step in the eventual liberation of Mosul,” said Colonel Steve Warren, spokesman for the international operation against IS.
IS overran Sinjar in August last year, forcing thousands of Yazidis to flee to the mountains overlooking the town, where they were trapped by the jihadists.
The United Nations has described the attack as a possible genocide, and on Thursday the US Holocaust Memorial Museum echoed that claim in a report detailing allegations of rape, torture and murder by IS against the minority.
Aiding the Yazidis, whose unique faith Sunni Muslim group IS considers heretical, was one of Washington’s main justifications for starting its air campaign against the jihadists last year.
After the IS extremists seized Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, and blitzed across northern Iraq, they extended its control on most parts of Sinjar (Shingal) district, west of Mosul on August 3, 2014 which led thousands of Kurdish families to flee to Mount Sinjar, where they were trapped in it and suffered from significant lack of water and food, killing and abduction of thousands of Yazidis as well as rape and captivity of thousands of women.
According to Human Rights organizations, thousands of Yazidi Kurdish women and girls have been forced to marry or been sold into sexual slavery by the IS jihadists. Kurdish officials say thousands of Yazidi girls still in Islamic State captivity.
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