"The attack began at 7:00 am (0400 GMT), and the (Kurdish) peshmerga forces advanced on several axes to liberate the center of the Sinjar district," Major General Ezzeddine Saadun told AFP.
Columns of smoke rose over the town from US-led coalition strikes and Kurdish shelling against IS positions in Sinjar, an AFP journalist said.
Sinjar is located on a key IS supply line linking Mosul, its hub in Iraq, with Syria, where it also holds large tracts of territory.
Cutting that link would be a major blow to the jihadists' ability to move fighters and supplies between the two countries.
The autonomous Kurdish region's security council said up to 7,500 of its peshmerga fighters would take part in the operation, which aims to retake Sinjar "and establish a significant buffer zone to protect the (town) and its inhabitants from incoming artillery."
IS overran the Sinjar area in August 2014, targeting members of the Yazidi religious minority in a brutal campaign of killings, enslavement and rape described the by United Nations as a possible genocide.
Thousands of Yazidis were trapped on Mount Sinjar, which overlooks the town, and aiding the Yazidis was one of Washington's main justifications for starting its air campaign against IS last year.
(AFP)
i24news.tv
12/11/15
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Kurds report advances in battle to retake Iraq's Sinjar town...
ReplyDeleteKurdish 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 U.S.-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 Shi'ite militias momentum in efforts to defeat Islamic State, which controls large areas of Iraq and Syria and has affiliates in Libya and Egypt..........http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/12/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-sinjar-idUSKCN0T10AL20151112#HgHoG3FK8ALyhJQb.99
12/11/15
Iraqi Kurdish militia fighters fighting to take back Sinjar from Islamic State militants reached the town centre on Friday, raising a Kurdish flag and firing off celebratory gunfire following a major offensive to retake the strategic Iraqi town...
ReplyDeleteAssociated Press journalists witnessed the celebrations, though a Kurdish officer cautioned that it was too soon to declare the town fully liberated.
The Kurdish forces encountered little resistance, at least initially, suggesting that many of the IS fighters may have pulled out of the town in anticipation of Friday's advance..........AP.............http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/kurdish-fighters-take-control-of-centre-of-sinjar-1.2656534