Kurdish forces recapture militant-held towns in Iraq, Syria

On Thursday, the U.S.-led group targeting ISIS, the Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve, released a video showing “a representative sample” of the airstrikes that were carried out in northern Iraq over the past two weeks to support this week’s offensive.

The day after Sinjar was cleared in a two-day offensive last week, a steady stream of trucks and vehicles climbed from the town up the mountainside once more, this time carrying bounty from Arab homes.

The recapture of Sinjar, located on the main supply road between IS-held cities in Syria and Iraq, could help open the path to Mosul, whose sudden seizure previous year prompted IS to declare a caliphate.

Iraqi lawmaker Vian Dakhil, a Yazidi, said Sunday that the speedy return of the kidnapped Yazidi women to their families would be “a completion for the liberation of Sinjar”.

The Kurdish regional government announced Friday that the Iraqi city Sinjar had been reclaimed from the Islamic State.

The ISIS militants have been in control of the town for more than a year since seizing it as they swept across northern Iraq in the summer of 2014.

It said the Syrian fighters on the ground were backed by intense air strikes by the U.S.-led coalition that killed dozens of IS militants.

“We have cut the supply route” for IS, said Sello. Kurdish officials told Reuters that their forces have reentered the city “from all directions” to begin clearing out remaining pockets of Islamic State insurgents.

Islamic State extremists overran Sinjar as they rampaged across Iraq in August 2014, leading to the killing, enslavement and flight of thousands of people from the minority Yazidi community.

“ISIL is defeated and on the run”, the Kurdistan Region Security Council said in a statement, using an earlier acronym for the militant group.

The United Nations has described the attack on the Yazidis as a possible genocide, and on Thursday the US Holocaust Memorial Museum echoed that assessment in a report detailing allegations of rape, torture and murder by IS against the minority.

Aiding the Yazidis, whose unique faith Isis considers heretical, was one of Washington’s main justifications for starting its air campaign against the jihadists previous year. The plight of those who escaped to Mt. Sinjar but were under siege from ISIS drew worldwide attention and resulted in a U.S.-Kurdish rescue effort.