Kurdish fighters push into IS-held Sinjar
Iraqi Kurdish fighters took part of the contested northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, where they freed hundreds of Yazidis trapped there for months by Islamic State (IS) fighters.
Iraqi Kurdish fighters took part of the contested northern Iraqi town of Sinjar yesterday, a day after celebrating sweeping across the northern side of Sinjar mountain, where they freed hundreds of Yazidis trapped there for months by Islamic State (IS) fighters.
The Iraqi Kurdish flag fluttered, with its yellow sun, and celebratory gunfire rang out. Little children cheered "Barzani's party", in reference to the Kurdish region's president, Massoud Barzani.
"We have been surrounded the last three months. We were living off raw wheat and barley," said Yazidi fighter Haso Mishko Haso. It was the plight of those trapped on the mountain, together with the IS advance towards the Kurdish capital Arbil, that prompted US President Barack Obama to order air strikes in Iraq in August. Thousands of members of the Yazidi religious minority were killed or captured by the militants.
Since then, Kurdish peshmerga forces in northern Iraq have regained most of the ground they had lost. But the war grinds on, as a weakened Iraqi army and Shiite militia volunteers battle back and forth with IS across central and western Iraq. The US is also carrying out air strikes on the militants in Syria.
The battle for Sinjar and the surrounding areas has become the latest focus in the campaign to take back territory lost to the Islamic State group during the militants' summer blitz. Yesterday, loud explosions and intense gunbattles were heard from inside the town.