Kurdish fighters make headway in bid to take Sinjar – coalition

Kurdish peshmerga forces have started clearing parts of the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar and have established positions along an Islamic State supply route between its two main strongholds in Iraq and Syria, the coalition said on Thursday.

Backed by US-led coalition air strikes, the Kurds launched an offensive in the early morning designed to cordon off Sinjar, take control of strategic routes and establish a buffer zone to protect the town from artillery. A victory in Sinjar could give the Kurds, government forces and Shia militias momentum in efforts to defeat Islamic State, which controls large areas of Iraq and Syria and has affiliates in Libya and Egypt.

So far the Kurds have captured three villages and penetrated parts of Highway 47, a supply route between Raqqa in Syria and the Iraqi city of Mosul, both of them Islamic State bastions.

“The ground assault began in the early morning hours of November 12, when peshmerga units successfully established blocking positions along Highway 47 and began clearing Sinjar,” said the coalition in a statement. “The peshmerga will continue operations to re-establish government control over key portions of the areas.”

Islamic State overran Sinjar more than a year ago. Its killing and enslaving of thousands of the northern town’s Yazidi residents focused international attention on the group’s violent campaign to impose its radical ideology and prompted Washington to launch its air offensive.

Clearing operations

The US expectation is that it would take two to four days to secure Sinjar and another week to finalise clearing operations, a US military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

US military advisers are with Kurdish commanders near Sinjar mountain but are positioned well back from the fighting, a US military spokesman said.

The US military estimated that 60 to 70 Islamic State fighters had been killed in US-led coalition air strikes so far on Thursday, said US army colonel Steve Warren, a Baghdad-based spokesman for the US-led coalition effort against Islamic State.

Islamic State uses Highway 47 to transport weapons, fighters and illicit commodities to fund its operations, said the coalition, which conducted more than 250 air strikes in the past month across northern Iraq. “Strikes destroyed Daesh fighting positions, command and control facilities, weapon storage facilities, improvised explosive device factories, and staging areas,” said the coalition, referring to Islamic State.

Russia’s recent interventions – air strikes against opponents of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria and intelligence sharing with Baghdad – have raised concerns in Washington that it is gaining influence in the Middle East.

US-led coalition air strikes pounded Islamic State-held areas in the town overnight, as about 7,500 Kurdish special forces, peshmerga and Yazidi fighters descended from the Sinjar mountain towards the front line in a military convoy.

“This operation will degrade Daesh resupply efforts, disrupt funding to the terrorist group’s operations, stem the flow of Daesh fighters into Iraq, and further isolate Mosul from Raqqa,” said the coalition. “Coalition air strikes will continue to target Daesh leaders, revenue sources, supply routes, command facilities, and weapons caches to dismantle their operations in Iraq and Syria.”

Spirits high

The Kurdish security council said Kurdish forces had captured a village to the west of Sinjar and two others on the eastern outskirts. Reuters could not independently confirm this. Spirits were high among Kurdish commanders and local officials near the front line. “It is going according to plan. We are optimistic and we consider today like a celebration,” said Sinjar district mayor Mahma Xelil.

Kurdish forces and the US military said the number of Islamic State fighters in the town had increased to nearly 600 after reinforcements arrived in the run-up to the offensive, which has been expected for weeks but delayed by the weather and friction between various Kurdish and Yazidi forces in Sinjar.

The offensive is being personally overseen by Kurdistan regional president Massoud Barzani, who is also head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which other groups in the area accuse of seeking to monopolise power. Many Yazidis lost faith in the KDP when its forces failed to protect them from Islamic State militants, who consider them devil worshippers, when the group attacked Sinjar in August 2014, systematically slaughtering, enslaving and raping thousands of Yazidis.

A Syrian affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) came to the rescue, evacuating thousands of Yazidis stranded on Sinjar mountain and establishing a permanent base there.

For Yazidi forces taking part, the battle is very much about retribution. Hussein Derbo, the head of a peshmerga battalion made up of 440 Yazidis, said the men under his command could have migrated to Europe but chose to stay and fight. “It is our land and our honour. They [Islamic State] stole our dignity. We want to get it back,” he told Reuters in a village on the northern outskirts of Sinjar town.

Derbo’s brother, Farman, echoed the sentiment, saying he hoped the militants would not retreat so the Yazidis could kill them all.

Reuters