It was IS’s killing and enslaving of thousands of Yazidi residents in Sinjar that focused worldwide attention on the group’s violent campaign to impose its radical ideology and prompted Washington to launch its air offensive. Kurdish officials estimate that there could be as many as 700 Islamic State fighters positioned around Sinjar.
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“This a more assertive approach”, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told reporters. “There are US personnel and my understanding is that there are coalition advisers from other countries, as well, participating”.
“(Peshmerga) troops are holding their position, waiting for reinforcements and more airstrikes so they can then move into the center of the town. Peshmerga forces, who pressed ahead in the early hours with a long convoy line of tanks, armored personnel carriers and Toyota pick-ups mounted with machine guns, had said they were optimistic they would be inside Sinjar today.
The Kurdish news agency Rudaw tweeted a stream of photos and videos it said were of Peshmerga troops inside the town. The statement also said the operation, dubbed Operation Free Sinjar, is aimed at establishing “a significant buffer zone to protect the city and its inhabitants from incoming artillery”.
Gunfire fell silent as peshmerga fighters marched into the town.
US special operations forces were operating from a hill above the fighting in Sinjar, said Col. Steven Warren, the spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Baghdad.
Barzani, speaking on Mount Sinjar overlooking the town Barzani said the city “is liberated by the Peshmerga“. The strikes have reportedly destroyed ISIS fighting positions, command and control facilities, weapon storage facilities, improvised explosive device factories, and staging areas.
Backed by US-led air strikes, the Kurds cut Sinjar off from east and west on Thursday in an offensive against Islamic State that could provide critical momentum in efforts to defeat the jihadist group. These are part of over 250 strikes that happened over the past month in northern Iraq.
Peshmerga forces from Iraq’s Kurdish region seized control of the governor’s office in Sinjar district on Thursday in an extensive military operation against Daesh, according to the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
“The two-day offensive to push ISIS out of Sinjar has also cut a key highway between the Iraqi city of Mosul and ISIS’s Syrian stronghold”, NPR’s Alice Fordham reports from nearby Dohuk. “What is important is this road”, al-Hashimi said. One attempt by the Kurds to retake it stalled in December.
Kurdish forces early Friday entered Islamic State-held city of Sinjar, as a separate assault in the south got under way on the Iraqi city of Ramadi, which the militants have held since May.
The group launched a wave of attacks against the minority Yazidi community, members of an ancient religion whom ISIL views as heretics and accuses of worshipping the devil.
The Yazidis fled into the mountains where ISIL fighters surrounded them, trapping and exposing them to the blazing heat.
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A few critics have charged that a USA approach perceived as slow-moving is in stark contrast to the Russian air campaign in Syria, which in less than six weeks has helped back various Syrian government ground thrusts against Islamic State and other Syrian rebel groups.
