Kurdish Forces Rout Islamic State From Iraqi City of Sinjar

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.

The semi-autonomous Iraqi-Kurdish government is seeking to upgrade the district of Sinjar to the status of a province in the country after Kurdish fighters liberated the town from ISIS, the foreign minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) said on Friday.

But there was a grim side to the victory-Kurdish fighters discovered a mass grave in Sinjar, believed to hold the remains of dozens of Yazidi women executed by ISIS.

Kurdish forces in Iraq, known as the Peshmerga army, launched a major offensive against the Islamic State group last week regaining control of Sinjar and 28 surrounding villages, and cutting off a strategic route for the extremist group between Iraq and Syria it uses for trade, arms and fighters.

Kurdish officials said the Peshmerga fighters advanced into Sinjar from “all directions”.

US President Barack Obama said he wanted to prevent a genocide of Yazidis when he first authorised air strikes against Isis militants, who consider the Yazidi minority devil worshippers.

The Iraqi town of Sinjar is strategically important to ISIS because it is located along the Syrian border and therefore allows the terrorists to maintain a cross-border territory for their so-called Islamic Caliphate. The U.S.-backed offensive to retake IS-held areas in the southern parts of Hassakeh is coinciding with the push to recapture Sinjar.

“We promised and we keep our promises: We proved to our Yazidi brothers and sisters that all Kuridstan is behind them”, he said, while overlooking Sinjar.

“This is not a surprise”, the official said, requesting anonymity.

Near 7,500 Kurdish troops took on near 600 IS fighters, CNN reported.

“Everyone who was missing a family member was hoping that they were still out there, that they are still alive and maybe they’ll come back”, he said.

Most Yazidis have since been displaced to camps in the Kurdistan region, but several thousand remain in Islamic State captivity. “A few of them are never coming back”. They also kidnapped women, who were reportedly forced to become sexual slaves in areas under the Islamic State’s control.

The United Nations has already described the IS campaign against the Yazidis as a possible genocide.

Kurdish officials later said the peshmerga had secured a cement factory, hospital and several other public buildings. “Death would have been better than what I felt when I saw that grave”, he said.

Rights group Amnesty worldwide documented attacks by Yazidi militiamen against two Sunni Arab villages north of Sinjar in January, in which 21 people were killed and numerous houses burned.