Kurdish Fighters Retake Iraqi City of Sinjar From ISIS

SINJAR, Iraq — Kurdish and Yazidi fighters retook Sinjar on Friday morning, on the second day of a major offensive to reclaim this city in northern Iraq, which has been under the brutal domination of the Islamic State for more than 15 months.
The pesh merga forces of the Kurdish government advanced to the center of the devastated city from the east, passing the rubble of empty houses and abandoned shops with battered metal storefronts. There they linked up with a Kurdish force that had advanced from the west, including fighters from a separatist group based in Syria known by the Kurdish abbreviation Y.P.G. and from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K.
Members of the Yazidi religious minority, which faced rape, enslavement and death in large numbers after the Islamic State overran Sinjar in August 2014, took part in the fight.
Amid deafening bursts of celebratory gunfire, a Yazidi militia fighter with a walrus mustache, Edo Qasim Shamo, proclaimed excitedly that the moment of his people’s “liberation” was finally at hand.

But even as he spoke, exchanges of gunfire in the northern part of the city made clear that it had not been entirely cleared of Islamic State fighters or the bombs they had planted.
Shawkat Abdullah Haji, a private who had belts of ammunition draped around his neck, said he had been moving through Sinjar’s streets since 9 a.m. He, too, warned a visitor not to head north, into the heart of the city, because it was “not clear” yet.
As Kurdish combat engineers fanned out to clear a road south of the city of improvised explosive devices, the whistle of an incoming Islamic State mortar round could be heard. It fell short.
An amalgam of Kurdish and Yazidi forces joined in the assault, many of them flying separate flags. There were members of the Kurdish group Zeravani Force, led by Maj. Gen. Aziz Waisi, and Yazidi members of the Kurdish-led pesh merga. But fighters from an independent Yazidi militia led by Heydar Shesho also joined in the fight, as did the Y.P.G.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/14/world/middleeast/sinjar-iraq-islamic-state.html






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＜City of ISIS＞
 

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