Kurdish forces liberate Sinjar from ISIS

Peshmerga commander Khalaf Murad Atto said there were still IS suicide bombers in the town, while Yazidi fighter Rasho Murad said snipers and bombs remained a threat.

The Islamists’ systematic killing and enslaving of thousands of Sinjar’s Yazidi residents as they swept across northern Iraq last summer drew global outrage and prompted the United States to intensify its campaign against IS. Tens of thousands more fled up nearby Mount Sinjar.

A victory in Sinjar could give the Kurds, government forces and Shi’ite militias critical momentum in efforts to defeat Islamic State, which controls large areas of Iraq and Syria and has affiliates in Libya and Egypt. ‘Some of them are never coming back’.

Kurdish-Iraqi leader Massud Barzani on Friday announced the “liberation” of the town of Sinjar from the Islamic State group, the latest in a series of setbacks for the Muslim militant group.

Earlier in the day, hundreds of Kurdish fighters dressed in camouflage and armed with rifles and machine guns moved into the town on foot, a journalist reported.

Two mass graves of more than 150 people were found in the Iraqi city of Sinjar few days after the Kurdish Iraqi forces claimed victory over the Islamic State group and regained control of the city, officials and local media have said.

However, Iraqi Peshmerga forces and Izadi fighters launched a ground operation last Thursday to push the militants out of Sinjar, which is situated over 400 kilometers (250 miles) northwest of the capital, Baghdad.

US President Barack Obama justified the country’s air campaign against IS militants in the area a year ago by invoking the duty to prevent a Yazidi genocide.

The breakthrough comes after at least 20 USA airstrikes targeted ISIS positions in Sinjar earlier this week in support of the offensive.

South-east of Sinjar, in the village of Soulag, four Peshmerga fighters were killed when a home-made bomb targeting their truck exploded, according to fighters in their unit.

Ali said he will only consider the operation a success once Sinjar is completely free of land mines and homemade bombs.

Backed by USA and British planes, forces belonging to the Peshmerga, which is the official army of the Kurdish region of Iraq, raised their flag in the town centre.