Kurds expect to recapture Sinjar soon

The USA later launched an air campaign against the Islamic State militants, also known as ISIL, ISIS and, in Arabic, as Daesh. “There’s a vast amount of air power – more intense than the fight for Kobani”.

Since the assault began, Kurds have captured several villages and are fighting to clear the town of Sinjar, where up to 800 IS fighters have dug in.

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 massacres in Sinjar prompted the U.S.to launch the first round of airstrikes on August 8, in what would mark the beginning of a broader coalition effort to battle the militant group in Iraq and Syria. Its membership includes foreign fighters and home-grown Syrian and Iraqi extremists, including ex-loyalists of former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein, deposed in the U.S.-led 2003 invasion.

“By controlling Highway 47, which is used by Daesh to transport weapons, fighters, illicit oil and other commodities that fund their operations, the coalition intends to increase pressure… and isolate their components from each other”, a coalition statement said. It reported that more than 150 square kilometers (60 square miles) had been retaken from ISIS.

Sinjar sits between Islamic State headquarters in Raqqa, Syria, and a stronghold in Mosul, Iraq.

The Kurdish Peshmerga fighters were being reinforced by thousands of lightly-armed Yazidis.

Speaking to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he’s confident Sinjar will fall, but was reluctant to say when.

Masoud Barzani announced that the city had been liberated at a news conference staged on one of Mount Sinjar’s peaks overlooking the city. “And now the Iraqi forces are moving on Ramadi”, he said. “Eventually we went down as well, to the outskirts of town”, says Giglio, “the airstrikes just hitting constantly … the pounding, you could feel it in your chest”.

And retaking Sinjar – where Daesh carried out a brutal campaign of killings, enslavement and rape against the Yazidi minority, members of which are now taking part in the battle for the town – would also be an important symbolic victory.

Columns of smoke rose over the town from US-led coalition strikes and Kurdish shelling against Isil positions in Sinjar, an AFP journalist said.

Maraq said he hopes ISIS will be defeated and his family can return home.

They encountered minimal resistance during Friday’s push, Ali said. “It’s going to be very hard”.

“(Peshmerga) troops are holding their position, waiting for reinforcements and more airstrikes so they can then move into the center of the town.

The militant advance in 2014 triggered the flight of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, mainly minorities, including Christians, Shiite Muslims and Yazidis, followers of an ancient faith linked to pre-Islamic Mesopotamian creeds. They (Islamic State) stole our dignity.

The Yazidis and Kurds have lived side by side for thousands of years and are friendly neighbors.