“ISIL defeated and on the run”, the Kurdistan regional security council said in a tweet, using another acronym for ISIS.
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Kurdish and Yazidi fighters retook the northern Iraqi city of Sinjar from Islamic State fighters on Friday morning, facing only pockets of resistance as the jihadists cleared out from a town they had brutally dominated for more than 15 months.
Kurdish forces have taken up positions along Highway 47, which is a supply route between Raqqa in Syria and the Iraqi city of Mosul – the main Islamic State bastions – used to transport weapons, fighters and other supplies.
The Shingal region has been under ISIS control for more than a year, where thousands of Yezidi civilians suffered from the atrocities of the extremist group. The Syria Kurds have been in intense fights with IS along the border and on Friday took the strategic town of al-Houl. Tens of thousands of Yezidis remained trapped in Mount Sinjar, suffering mass killings, kidnappings and rape cases.
During a visit to Tunisia on November 13, Secretary of State John Kerry said the US was “absolutely confident that over the next days Sinjar will be able to be liberated”.
On Thursday, the U.S.-led group targeting ISIS, the Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve, released a video showing “a representative sample” of the airstrikes that were carried out in northern Iraq over the past two weeks to support this week’s offensive.
And Iraq’s military said on Friday its forces had advanced on three fronts to begin clearing ISIS fighters from the western city of Ramadi, but police and government officials said progress was extremely slow.
“Sinjar was liberated by the blood of the peshmerga and became part of Kurdistan”, Barzani said.
Earlier in the day, hundreds of Kurdish fighters, dressed in camouflage uniforms and armed with assault rifles and machine gun, moved into the town on foot.
To disrupt production in Syria, the United States and its allies have increased their airstrikes against the sprawling oil fields that the Islamic State controls, USA officials said this week.
If his death is confirmed, it would be an key strike in the US-led campaign against the group and would come more than a year after US President Barack Obama promised justice after the deaths of American hostages.
On Thursday, the Peshmerga forces had launched an extensive military operation against Daesh in the Ezidi Kurdish-majority district.
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Thursday’s attack – one of the deadliest in years in Lebanon – struck a stronghold of the militant Shiite Hezbollah group, and Prime Minister Tammam Salam chaired a security meeting on the bombings.
