Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani announced the "liberation" of Sinjar from the Islamic State group Friday in an assault backed by US-led air strikes that cut a key jihadist supply line with Syria. The operation, led by the autonomous Kurdish region's peshmerga forces, also involved fighters from the Yazidi minority, a local Kurdish-speaking community targeted in a brutal IS campaign of massacres, enslavement and rape.
The success of the campaign is the latest sign that IS, which won a series of victories in a stunningly rapid offensive in Iraq last year, is now on the defensive. "I am here to announce the liberation of Sinjar," Barzani, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, told a news conference near the northern town.
Barzani's 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," Barzani said. Baghdad, which has long opposed Kurdistan's desire to incorporate a swathe of disputed northern territory, is unlikely to welcome that.
Mahma Khalil, the local official responsible for the area, told AFP Friday evening: "The security situation is stable now in Sinjar." "All the (IS) gunmen escaped from Sinjar." 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, an AFP journalist reported. Carrying the Kurdish region's flag, they firing in 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. Burned 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 IS remains, and there is also the possibility of holdout jihadists, who have kept up attacks even after other areas in Iraq were said to have been retaken.
The regional security council said "peshmerga forces entered Sinjar town from all four directions to clear remaining (IS) terrorists from the area." Sinjar has been pounded by US-led air strikes and Kurdish artillery fire targeting IS positions, which sent massive columns of smoke drifting up from the town on Thursday.