‘Some of them are never coming back’.
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The ground attack to liberate Sinjar was predated by a sustained coalition-led bombing campaign against ISIS targets in and around the town.
Sinjar has been under the control of the self-described Islamic State group for more than a year.
Thousands of Yazidis were massacred or enslaved by ISIS after they took the town during their surge into northern Iraq previous year.
“Sinjar is liberated”, said the president of Iraq’s Kurdistan region, Massoud Barzani, in remarks made on Mount Sinjar, which overlooks the town located in the north-west of the country. One 9-year-old Yazidi girl says she was raped by 10 different militants before becoming pregnant. “Today we took revenge for every Yazidi”. Associated Press journalists saw them raise a flag over a building in the centre of the city. US Army Colonel Steven Warren said Peshmerga forces “firmly control” several kilometres on either side of the town.
But the takeover also heralded widespread abuse of Sinjar’s Yazidi population, categorized as “devil worshipers” under the Islamic State’s severe application of sharia, or Islamic law.
Sky’s Sam Kiley joined the patrols in Sinjar and said IS “took a pounding”.
There is reason for officials’ caution. An earlier attempt to retake Sinjar, at the foot of Sinjar Mountain about 30 miles (50km) from the Syrian border, stalled in December and militants have since been reinforcing their ranks. Militants have since been reinforcing their ranks.
Islamic State captured Sinjar during its rampage across northern Iraq in summer a year ago and killed and captured thousands of members of the Yazidi religious minority, including women forced into sexual slavery.
– The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for two bombings Friday in Baghdad that killed 26 people.
The USA later launched an air campaign against the Islamic State militants, also known as Isil, Isis and, in Arabic, as Daesh. Hundreds of peshmerga fighters were seen walking into the town and along a main road without facing immediate resistance.
Kurdish forces said they intercepted radio traffic between ISIS fighters leading up to their advance suggesting a few of them were deserting, and said they heard an ISIS leader “berating” his men and threatening to behead deserters.
“ISIL defeated and on the run”, the Kurdistan regional security council said in a tweet, using another acronym for ISIS.
“We were overjoyed with the news we received of the heroic victories of Kurdish and peshmerga forces in the liberation of Sinjar”, said Dakhil in a statement, according to local media outlet Ekurd.
The blasts continued Friday.
As he uttered those words, however, a different flag was also prominently displayed in Sinjar – that of the rival PKK separatist movement, along with the banners of its Syrian Kurdish offshoot.
“Sinjar is part of the Kurdistan Region”, he said.
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“Until now, we defused 45 bombs and a vehicle bomb”, Sulaiman Saeed, who works in explosives disposal, told AFP.
