Kurdish forces ‘enter IS-held Sinjar’

“At approximately 10:20am, peshmerga forces entered Sinjar town from four directions to clear remaining IS terrorists from the area”, the Kurdish Regional Security Council said in a statement.

“We saw more than 50 Daesh (fighters) flee overnight”, he said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.

“I am here to announce the liberation of Sinjar”, Barzani told a news conference as Kurdish forces raised their flag in the town center.

Iraqi Kurdish forces backed by US-led air strikes and ground spotters were Friday preparing to move into Sinjar in a major operation to retake the town from the Islamic State group, officials said.

The town was overrun by the extremists as they rampaged across Iraq in August 2014, leading to the killing, enslavement and flight of thousands of people from the minority Yazidi community. Human-rights monitors accused the militants of systematic rape and carrying out other acts of sexual violence against thousands Yezidi women and girls. Supported by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, they succeeded in off cutting a key nearby highway in the operation, dubbed “Operation Free Sinjar”. “Since October 1st, the coalition has conducted 104 airstrikes as part of the shaping fires” softening up ISIS targets before the Kurd offensive.

Officials with the U.S.-led coalition estimated there were between 400 and 550 IS fighters inside Sinjar before the offensive began Thursday. USA airstrikes pounded suspected ISIS targets throughout the day.

A hospital, several public buildings, a silo and cement factory have all been secured, the Kurdistan Regional Security Council (KRSC) said in a another tweet. The 75-mile-long highway has been one of the most active supply lines for ISIS, a major conduit for goods, weapons and fighters.

Naseer Muneer, a senior Defense Ministry official, said Iraqi commanders sought to capitalize on the battle in Sinjar to hit Islamic State.

“There are a few entrenched IS fighters, but we are absolutely confident that over the next days Sinjar will be able to be liberated”, Kerry said during a visit to Tunis.

Nineveh’s towns of Sinjar, Zumar and Sunoni are parts of the disputed areas of mixed ethnicities of Kurds, Arabs, Turkmans and others.

Knights points to numerous examples over the past year in which the Islamic State group staged a preemptive withdrawal from key cities and towns, especially in Iraq.

Although recapturing Sinjar wouldn’t entirely cut off ISIS’ supply lines between Syria and Iraq, it would hinder it quite a bit. Initially, the logic was that the combined might of Kurdish and Iraqi military forces would have the best chance of driving ISIS back into Syria, where a growing U.S.-trained moderate rebel force would finish ISIS off.

Sinjar was captured by the Islamic State shortly after the extremists seized Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.