IS ‘defeated and on the run’ after people they enslaved help drive them from town

Islamic State has been driven from the key Iraqi town of Sinjar after the people they enslaved there helped Kurdish militia drive them out. “ISIL defeated and on the run,” officials tweeted before Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Borzani arrived to declare “I am here to announce the liberation of Sinjar.” The Kurdish fighters, known as peshmerga, raised their flag and fired celebratory gunfire in the devastated streets on Friday morning. They were joined in the offensive by thousands of Yazidis, the religious minority who were murdered or enslaved when IS captured Sinjar two years ago.

We saw more than 50 Daesh (fighters) flee overnight. Before there were only 200 to 300 in the city.

Diar Namo, Peshmerga unit deputy commander

Peshmerga, supported by US-led coalition airstrikes, launched a major offensive, dubbed Operation Free Sinjar, to retake the town and cut a key IS supply route on Thursday. The Kurdish fighters, some carrying rocket-propelled grenades, moved into the town on foot the following day. They encountered little resistance, suggesting that many of the IS fighters may have pulled out of the town. It came on the day a report based on harrowing interviews detailing rape, torture and murder revealed the extent of IS’s 'genocide’ against the Yazidis in the region. Meanwhile, Iraq’s military were advancing on three fronts to begin clearing IS militants from the western city of Ramadi, which security forces have been encircling for months.

We have seized many of their weapons and we have also bodies of the dead militants. Peshmerga are now in full control of the town.

Soldier Wahder Saleh

sinjar Middle East