BAGHDAD (AP) – Kurdish Iraqi fighters launched a long-awaited offensive to retake the strategic town of Sinjar from the Islamic State group and in the first hours of the battle Thursday seized control of one the extremist group’s key supply lines into the town.
Here’s a look at Sinjar, which was overrun by the IS last year, and the town’s importance in the overall battle against the Sunni militant group:
SYMBOLIC VALUE
Sinjar was captured by the Islamic State group in August 2014, shortly after the extremists seized Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, and blitzed from Syria across northern Iraq. Once in Sinjar, IS inflicted a wave of terror against the minority Yazidi community, members of an ancient religion whom the Islamic State group views as heretics and accuses of worshipping the devil.
Since then, the name Sinjar has evoked images of tens of thousands of terrified Yazidis fleeing into the mountains, where the militants surrounded them, leaving them trapped and exposed to scorching summer heat. The crisis prompted the United States to launch aid drops to the stranded. An untold number were killed in the assault, and hundreds of men and women were abducted – the women subsequently enslaved and given to IS militants across the group’s territory in Iraq and Syria. Many of the men were believed killed, others forced to convert. Some of those stranded on nearby Mt. Sinjar were rescued by Syrian Kurdish fighters, others eventually escaped after Kurdish fighters opened a corridor for them to the northeast.