Kurdish peshmerga fighters are reported to have beaten back Islamic State (IS) forces at Mount Sinjar, recapturing a large area of territory and opening a pathway to free hundreds of trapped Yazidis.
"Peshmerga forces have reached Mount Sinjar, the siege on the mountain has been lifted," Masrour Barzani, head of the Iraqi Kurdish region's national security council, said on Thursday.
The Kurdish security council said,
“In under 48 hours, peshmerga forces have succeeded in retaking 700 square kilometres of Isis-held territory... This corridor . . . has enabled the peshmerga to gain direct access to the displaced people trapped on Mt Sinjar, to provide humanitarian support and evacuation where necessary.”
Kurdish fighters were backed by US-led airstrikes, with reports of 45 strikes in total, a figure described as “unprecedented” by the BBC's Jim Muir in Beirut. He also said the Kurdish attack as the “biggest offensive ever mounted by anybody against IS”.
Colonel Nawruz Majid Mohammed, a Kurdish commander, acknowledged the role the strikes played, saying, “We couldn’t have done any of this without the help of coalition airstrikes”.
The latest battle comes amid the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Martin Dempsey, saying that coalition air strikes had killed several high ranking members of the IS leadership.
"These are high-value targets, senior leadership," said Gen Dempsey, adding it would be "disruptive to their planning and command and control".
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