Kerry ‘confident’ Sinjar will be taken by Kurdish forces ‘in days’

Iraqi Kurdish regional President Massoud Barzani said Friday that the Iraqi town of Sinjar had been retaken from Islamic State (IS) group militants, with US Secretary of State John Kerry saying he was ‘confident’ the town would fall ‘in days’.

"I am here to announce the liberation of Sinjar," a confident Barzani told a news conference near the northern town. "Sinjar was liberated by the blood of the peshmerga [Kurdish forces] and became part of Kurdistan."

Kurdish forces, backed by US air strikes, launched their offensive on Thursday.

• US Secretary of State John Kerry, however, was more cautious. Speaking during a visit to Tunis, he said he was "absolutely confident" that Sinjar would be retaken from the IS group.

"There are some entrenched IS fighters, but we are absolutely confident that over the next days Sinjar will be liberated," he said.

Heavy bursts of gunfire could be heard inside Sinjar earlier Friday, as peshmerga fighters filed down the hill overlooking the town from the north, some with rocket-propelled grenades on their shoulders, a Reuters witness said.

Kurdish forces have effectively cut Sinjar off from east and west as part of a major offensive to retake the town from the IS group....

"By seizing Sinjar, we'll be able to cut that line of communication, which we believe will constrict [the IS group’s] ability to resupply themselves, and is a critical first step in the eventual liberation of Mosul," said Colonel Steve Warren, spokesman for the US-led coalition battling against the jihadists.

The IS group overran Sinjar in August last year, forcing thousands of people from the Yazidi religious minority to flee to the mountains overlooking the town, where they were trapped by the jihadists.

The United Nations has described the attack on the Yazidis as a possible genocide, and on Thursday the US Holocaust Memorial Museum echoed that claim in a report detailing allegations of rape, torture and murder by the IS group against the minority.

Aiding the Yazidis, whose unique faith the Sunni Muslim IS group considers heretical, was one of Washington's main justifications for starting its air campaign against the jihadists last year.
 (FRANCE24 with AFP, REUTERS)
  france24.com 
13/11/15
--
-
Related:

• Iraqi Kurds forces enter town of Sinjar, reach city center 

• Kurdish President Massoud Barzani officially announced the 'liberation' of Sinjar from Islamic State militants Friday after a major operation backed by US-led strikes to retake the town made infamous by the group's massacre of members of the Yazidi minority...