Nawaf Ashur, a resident of Sinjar who was forced to flee with his family in August a year ago, said the news of the mass graves has jarred the Yazidi community. He said it is a specific effort to target the supply route and, if successful, will have a “significant” impact on IS operations in that part of northern Iraq. They also sought to cut off an east-west highway used by the group to funnel fighters and supplies between the Syrian city of Raqqa and Mosul, its defacto capital in Iraq.
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“But Sinjar and nearby villages are largely depopulated – taking back Mosul, home to hundreds of thousands of civilians, is still a distant prospect”, she says.
The gains against IS are the latest sign that the jihadist group, which won a series of victories in a stunningly rapid offensive in Iraq past year, is now on the defensive.
Earlier this month, the Pentagon announced that since it started “kinetic operations” against ISIS on August 8, 2014, the operation has cost $5 billion.
The United Nations has described the attack on the Yazidis as a possible genocide, and on Thursday the US Holocaust Memorial Museum echoed that assessment in a report detailing allegations of rape, torture and murder by Isis against the minority.
“Sinjar is very important because it has become a symbol of the injustice against the people of Kurdistan”, Barzani said in his statement today, adding that “aside from the Kurdistan flag, we do not accept any other flag rising over Sinjar”.
Other analysts, however, said losing Mount Sinjar would not be a major blow to the Islamic State, which still holds large areas of territory throughout Iraq and Syria.
US-led coalition air strikes supported the offensive, dubbed Operation Free Sinjar.
Iraqi Kurdish regional president Massoud Barzani declared “the liberation of Sinjar” after Peshmerga forces and fighters affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, both of which include Yazidis, entered the town on Friday after cutting it off from east and west.
Badr Sleiman Taha, 24, from Kocho, told Reuters that his mother, aunt and grandmother were among those executed by the group, and that he recognized the cane of an old woman from his village among the remains. They occupy an autonomous region in northern Iraq, but the Kurdish homeland also covers portions of Iran, Turkey, Armenia and Syria.
A security official with the Kurdish militia forces known as peshmerga also confirmed the discovery of the mass graves.
Barack Obama said he wanted to prevent a genocide of Yazidis when authorising the first air strikes against Isis militants, who consider the minority as devil-worshippers.
Sky’s Sam Kiley joined the patrols in Sinjar and said IS “took a pounding”.
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Most Yazidis have been displaced to camps in the Kurdistan region; several thousand remain in Islamic State captivity.
