SINJAR // In a double blow for ISIL, Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani announced the “liberation” of the town of Sinjar from the extremist group on Friday, as Syrian Arab rebels and Kurdish fighters said they had ejected the militants from a key position on the Iraqi border.
The Sinjar operation was led by the autonomous Kurdish region’s peshmerga forces but also involved fighters from the Yazidi minority, which ISIL targeted in a brutal campaign of massacres, enslavement and rape. It cut a key supply line linking ISIL-held areas in Iraq with those in Syria.
Across the border, the Syrian Democratic Forces coalition announcing it had driven the extremists out of Al Hol, an important village on ISIL’s Iraq-Syria supply route.
The gains against ISIL are the latest sign that the group, which won a series of victories in a stunningly rapid offensive in Iraq last year, is now on the defensive.
ISIL overran Sinjar in August last year, forcing thousands of Yazidis to flee to mountains overlooking the town, where they were trapped by the extremists.
Aiding the Yazidis, who ISIL consider to be heretics, was one of Washington’s main justifications for starting its air campaign against the group last year.
On Friday, US president Barack Obama expressed satisfaction with efforts against ISIL, saying the group’s expansion has been curbed.
“From the start, our goal has been first to contain, and we have contained them,” Mr Obama said.
Mr Barzani, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, told a press conference near the northern town: “I am here to announce the liberation of Sinjar.”
His remarks also made clear that political conflict over Sinjar would likely follow the military battle for the town.
“Sinjar was liberated by the blood of the peshmerga and became part of Kurdistan,” he said.
Baghdad, which has long opposed Kurdistan’s desire to incorporate a swathe of disputed northern territory, is unlikely to welcome that idea.
Earlier in the day, hundreds of Kurdish fighters, dressed in camouflage uniforms and armed with assault rifles and machineguns, moved into the town on foot.
Carrying the Kurdish region’s flag, they fired into the air and shouted “Long live the peshmerga!” and “Long live Kurdistan!”.
Inside Sinjar, many houses and shops, a petrol garage and the local government headquarters had been destroyed.
Burnt out cars sat in the streets, while barrels apparently containing explosives had been left behind.
The huge task of clearing Sinjar of bombs planted by ISIL remains, and there is also the possibility of holdout militants, who have kept up attacks even after other areas in Iraq were said to have been retaken.
Sinjar has been pounded by US-led air strikes and Kurdish artillery fire targeting ISIL positions, which sent massive columns of smoke drifting up from the town on Thursday.
The US-led coalition carried out 36 strikes against the extremists in the Sinjar area on Wednesday and Thursday, and 15 more across the border in Al Hol, which the Syrian Democratic Forces announced on Friday they had taken a day before.
In a rare admission on Thursday, the Pentagon said US ground forces advising the Kurds on their offensive in Sinjar were close enough to the front to identify ISIL targets and call in strikes.
Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said that most of the US-led coalition troops were behind the front lines working with Kurdish commanders.
But “there are some advisers who are on Sinjar mountain, assisting in the selection of air strike targets”.
On Thursday, Kurdish forces cut the key road that links ISIL-held areas in Iraq and Syria.
“Sinjar sits astride Highway 47, which is a key and critical resupply route” for ISIL, said Colonel Steve Warren, the anti-ISIL coalition’s spokesman.
“By seizing Sinjar, we’ll be able to cut that line of communication, which we believe will constrict [ISIL’s] ability to resupply themselves, and is a critical first step in the eventual liberation of Mosul,” he added, referring to the group’s main stronghold in Iraq.
* Agence France-Presse
