Kurds Say Siege of Mt. Sinjar Broken as U.S. Says Top IS Leaders Killed

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A broad peshmerga operation backed by U.S.-led air strikes broke the Islamic State group's weeks-old siege of Iraq's Mount Sinjar on Thursday, a top Iraqi Kurdistan security official said, as Washington said top IS leaders have been killed in air raids in Iraq.

"Peshmerga forces have reached Mount Sinjar, the siege on the mountain has been lifted," Masrour Barzani, the chancellor of the Kurdistan Regional Security Council, told reporters from an operations center near the border with Syria.

A Yazidi leader atop the mountain however said he could see no sign of a military deployment and a peshmerga commander explained that any evacuation would only begin on Friday.

A statement from Barzani's office said the operation launched by the peshmerga on Wednesday morning had been one of the most successful so far against the Islamic State (IS) group.

It said the siege was broken at 1530 GMT and was the conclusion of an operation involving 8,000 peshmerga forces.

"This operation represents the single biggest military offensive against IS and the most successful," the statement said.

It also said that, as a result, jihadist fighters had fled en masse towards strongholds such as Tall Afar and Mosul, Iraq's second city and the main IS hub in northern Iraq.

Barzani told reporters the peshmerga push had cut key supply lines used by IS and reclaimed a total of 700 square kilometers (270 square miles) during the past two days.

A devastating jihadist attack on the Yazidi minority's Sinjar heartland in August displaced tens of thousands of people and was one of the reasons put forward by U.S. President Barack Obama for launching strikes four months ago.

Amid fears of a genocide against the small Kurdish-speaking minority, tens of thousands of Yazidis fled to the mountain and remained trapped there in the searing summer heat with no supplies.

Kurdish fighters, mostly Syrian, broke that first siege but remaining anti-IS forces were subsequently unable to hold positions in the plains and retreated back to the mountain in late September.

The peshmerga commander for the area said troops had reached the mountain and secured a road that would enable people to leave, effectively breaking the siege.

"Tomorrow most of the people will come down from the mountain," Mohamed Kojar told Agence France-Presse by phone, explaining the offensive had secured a corridor northeast of the mountain.

Dawood Jundi, a peshmerga field commander based on the mountain, also said the road had been secured but said some pockets of IS presence near the peshmerga advance remained to be cleared.

Said Hassan Said, a Yazidi politician also based on the mountain, for his part said he could see no sign that the siege had been broken.

"I'm on top of the mountain right now, I can see all areas from my position," he said. "There are no clashes, no movements, there is no deployment of peshmerga I can see."

Said put the number of families on the mountain at 1,200 and stressed they were surviving on fast dwindling supplies.

Speaking to reporters near the Fishkhabur border crossing with Syria, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of the mountain, Barzani said the operation had a key road used by IS fighters east of their main Iraqi hub of Mosul.

Meanwhile, a U.S. defense official said several leaders of the IS group have been killed in U.S. air strikes in northern Iraq in recent days.

"These were the result of a series of air strikes this month carried out over the course of several days," the official told Agence France-Presse on condition of anonymity.

Comments 2
Thumb freedomarch 18 December 2014, 22:04

God bless our kurdish heros.

Default-user-icon puppet (Guest) 18 December 2014, 22:23

I respect Mr. and Mrs. Flamethrower and their contribution to humanity