Islamic State have been forced out of the Iraqi town of Sinjar by a combination of a Kurdish peshmerga ground assault and U.S. airstrikes. “ISIL defeated and on the run,” read a tweet from the Kurdistan regional security council, using an acronym for Islamic State.
Confirmation of the successful offensive comes just hours after the Pentagon expressed a “high degree of certainty” that the British Islamic State executioner, Mohammed Emwazi, popularly referred to as “Jihadi John”, was killed by U.S. hellfire missiles in the Syrian city of Raqqa .
The Iraqi Kurdish regional President Massoud Barzani , declared that the retaking of Sinjar constitutes a significant strategic victory in the efforts to force Islamic State out of the western provincial capital of Ramadi, as well as Mosul in the North. Sinjar was a crucial transport artery for the self-proclaimed caliphate through which oil, solders, arms, and other commodities essential for its survival were circulated.
“The liberation of Sinjar will have a big impact on liberating Mosul”, Barzani said, adding that “Sinjar was liberated by the blood of the peshmerga and became part of Kurdistan.”
President @masoud_barzani addresses the people of Sinjar following success of Operation #FreeSinjar . pic.twitter.com/tXbH2SIlut
— KR Security Council (@KRSCPress) November 13, 2015
Islamic State seized Sinjar early last August , prompting most of the town’s Yazidi inhabitants to flee knowing that the terrorist group regard them as infidels. An estimated 50,000 Yazidis became trapped on Mount Sinjar outside the town without access to food or water for days as a consequence before being rescued by Syrian Kurdish forces.
Indeed, the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry stated that a key part of the reason why America cooperated with Kurdish forces on the offensive was to ensure those exiled Yazidis a safe return to their homes.
Those who remained in Sinjar were brutally enslaved, tortured, raped, and killed. A new report published by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum determined that the systematic nature of Islamic State’s persecution of Iraq’s Yazidi population constitutes genocide. The report estimates that only 2,000 of the 5,000 Yazidi men, women, and children captured by Islamic State last year have been liberated or managed to flee.
The rest remain in captivity, subject to “atrocity crimes”.
The BBC reports that the offensive was launched on Thursday night with U.S. backing. Kurdish and Yazidi forces advanced on the town from three fronts after American warplanes bombed key strategic targets, notably Islamic State command-and-control facilities and weapons stores.
While there were an estimated 600 Islamic State soldiers in Sinjar prior to the attack, eyewitness accounts suggest that the ground troop met with little resistance after the bombing, which killed 60 to 70 enemy targets. It is not clear if the retreat was strategic or forced by the strength of the invading army, reported at over 7,500.
Kurdish forces ‘closing in’ on Islamic State fighters in Iraqi town of #Sinjar ? https://t.co/f3IMai65TE pic.twitter.com/VaCDGyafOO
— BBC Newshour (@BBCNewshour) November 13, 2015
After securing the town, the Kurdish army immediately blocked Highway 47, severely disrupting the Islamic State’s transport and communications system in northern Iraq and north-eastern Syria.
Indeed, the Washington Post reports the research director at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, Jessica Lewis McFate, as stating that the seizure of Highway 47 is sufficient to discredit Islamic State’s claim to be a state, delegitimizing the caliphate by breaking up the link between Mosul and Raqqa, which facilitates the group’s “outward expansion”.
[Photo by John Moore / Getty Images News]
