Iraqi and Kurdish Forces Trying to Retake Ground in Northern Iraq From ISIS

December 21, 2014

Kurds Push Into Sinjar; Iraqis Battle for Airport

SINJAR, Iraq — Iraqi Kurdish fighters, backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, pushed their way Sunday into the town of Sinjar, captured by the Islamic State militants last summer.

Further to the east, near the Syrian border, Iraqi security forces battled the IS extremists as they tried to retake the strategic military airport of Tal Afar.

The battle for Sinjar and the surroundings has become the latest focus in the campaign to take back territory lost to the Islamic State during the militants’ summer blitz that captured large swaths of northern and western Iraq and neighboring Syria.

Last week, Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters launched the operation to retake Sinjar and opened up a passageway to Mt. Sinjar, which overlooks the town.

The development was an incremental step and helped evacuate some of the thousands of Yazidis trapped on the mountain following the town’s fall in August.

On Sunday, loud explosions and intense gunbattles were heard from inside the town as coalition aircraft bombed Islamic State targets. The president of the self-ruled northern Kurdish region, Masoud Bazani, vowed to crush IS fighters.

"Most of the districts are under our control," Barzani told peshmerga troops as he toured their positions on Mt. Sinjar. "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 going operation.

Meanwhile, Iraqi counter-terrorism forces launched an offensive Saturday to retake the military airport near the town of Tal Afar from the IS group, said a Baghdad official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to media. Tal Afar is a mixed Shiite-Sunni city of some 200,000 located strategically near the Syrian border to the east of Sinjar.