Sinjar is a symbolic as well as strategic prize.
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In one such operation, led by Kak Saidi, a 60-year-old peshmerga veteran, 15 Kurdish fighters cheered each explosion from nearby airstrikes with the words “Hajj Obama”, a Muslim honorific for the American president.
The U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group began its first coordinated cross-border offensive on Thursday, driving to retake the key city of Sinjar in northern Iraq while choking off the extremist movement’s capital of Raqqa in Syria.
A permanent cut in the supply line would hamper ISIL’s ability to move fighters and supplies between territory it controls in northern Iraq and Syria. The USA later launched an air campaign against the Islamic State militants, also known as ISIL, ISIS and, in Arabic, as Daesh.
USA advisers were also positioned with Kurdish commanders, set back from the front line and behind Sinjar mountain, to remain away from the crossfire, Warren said.
“They’re not directly in the line of action, but they might be able to visibly see it”, he added.
The Kurdish Regional Security Council said about 7,500 peshmerga fighters were advancing on the town on three fronts and had secured the villages of Gabarra in the west and Tel Shore, Fadhelya and Qen on the eastern front.
“The attack began at 7am, and the peshmerga forces advanced on several axes to liberate the centre of the Sinjar district”, Major General Ezzeddine Saadun said.
British aircraft have carried out strikes against IS positions as part of Kurdish efforts to retake the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar.
Operation Free Sinjar aims to cordon off the town, take control of Islamic State supply routes and establish a buffer zone to protect the town from artillery, a statement from the Kurdish national security council said.
A US military official told ABC News that it is estimated that there are several hundred ISIS fighters in Sinjar. ISIS was counter-attacking with mortars and VBIEDs, or vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, Rudaw said.
Highway 47, then, is a key prize, as it has been a major supply route for Iraqi oil and crops that have been shipped to supply Raqqa.
Many Yazidis believe they were abandoned by the KAR’s Peshmerga, and were rescued only when the PKK fought their way up Mt Sinjar and led tens of thousands of refugees to safety in areas of neighbouring Syria.
Since the October 19 federal election, that saw the Trudeau Liberals defeat the Harper Conservatives, Canadian fighter jets have conducted air strikes 11 times in Iraq, destroying Islamic State fighting positions and ammunition caches.
Maraq and his family fled Sinjar when ISIS militants overran the city 15 months ago. 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. Make no mistake, this battle over Sinjar is important to you and me and the Western world.
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For Yazidi forces taking part, the battle is very much about retribution.
