The battle for Sinjar and the surrounding areas has become the latest focus in the campaign to take back territory lost to the Islamic State group during the militants’ summer blitz that captured much of northern and western Iraq. The militants also control a large chunk of neighboring Syria.
Last week, Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters launched the operation to retake Sinjar. So far, they’ve managed to open up a passageway to Mount Sinjar, a long, rugged mountain that overlooks the town. That push allowed some of the thousands of Yazidis trapped on the mountain since the town’s fall in August to evacuate.
On Sunday, pershmerga fighters said they advanced into Sinjar itself. Loud explosions and intense gunbattles could be heard echoing from inside the town as U.S.-led coalition warplanes bombed Islamic State militants from the sky.
“We were fighting inside Sinjar. There were snipers everywhere inside,” 28-year-old Kurdish fighter Nabil Mohammed said. “One of them fired a rocket-propelled grenade at us. I ran into a house and I was hit by a sniper’s bullet in my thigh.”
Mohammed spoke in a field hospital on Mount Sinjar, where he and many of the 20 wounded Kurdish fighters were brought for treatment. Ambulances rushed the wounded to the clinic. Inside, fighters wept as the body of one man killed by a sniper’s bullet was placed into a body bag.
Earlier Sunday, the president of the self-ruled northern Kurdish region, Masoud Bazani, toured Kurdish positions on Mount Sinjar, where he vowed to defeat the Islamic State group.
“Most of the districts are under our control,” Barzani told peshmerga troops. “We will crush the Islamic State.”
At least 15 Kurdish fighters wounded in Sunday’s clashes were brought from the front-lines to a makeshift clinic on the mountain.
The spokesman for the Kurdish forces, Jabbar Yawar, said the fighters were still facing resistance from pockets of Islamic State militants still inside the town and that it is “far from cleared.” He declined to provide more details on the ongoing operation.
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