Kurdish forces launch battle to retake Iraq’s Sinjar from Islamic State

Kurdish and U.S. forces have launched an offensive to retake Sinjar in northern Iraq from Islamic State - and cut off a vital supply route for the militants. U.S.-led coalition airstrikes have been pounding IS-held areas in the town as around 7,500 Kurdish special forces, Peshmerga and Yazidi fighters descend from Sinjar mountain towards the frontline. They travelled in a convoy made up of humvees on flatbed trucks, heavy artillery and fighters waving Kurdish flags and brandishing their rifles - winding past abandoned cars and bloodstained clothing on the road many of them had used to flee IS in 2014.

It is our land and our honour. They (Islamic State) stole our dignity. We want to get it back.

Hussein Derbo, the head of a Peshmerga battalion made up of 440 Yazidis, speaking to Reuters

On the frontline, just 300m from Islamic State fighters, Loqman Ibrahim, head of a Yazidi battalion under Peshmerga command, told Reuters he heard militants urging each other to fight to the death and that an order was given not to “withdraw from the caliphate”. Operation Free Sinjar aims to cordon off the town, which sits on the main highway between Mosul and Raqqa - the main IS bastions in Iraq and Syria. Sinjar was overrun more than a year ago by IS, who massacred and enslaved thousands of Yazidis - regarded as devil worshippers by the extremists. The onslaught prompted Barack Obama to authorise the first airstrikes against Islamic State in August 2014, saying he was acting to prevent a genocide of the Yazidis.

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