Under Iraqi town, IS militants built network of tunnels

In this image made from video taken on Sunday, Nov. 22, 2015, a member of Kurdish security forces shows a tunnel complex under the city of Sinjar, northern Iraq that were used by Islamic State fighters to move undetected and avoid coalition airstrikes before the town was retaken from the militants. In this image made from video taken on Sunday, Nov. 22, 2015, a member of Kurdish security forces shows a tunnel complex under the city of Sinjar, northern Iraq that were used by Islamic State fighters to move undetected and avoid coalition airstrikes before the town was retaken from the militants.

By Associated Press November 25, 2015 3 min read

IRBIL, Iraq – Under the Iraqi town of Sinjar, Islamic State group militants built a network of tunnels, complete with sleeping quarters, wired with electricity and fortified with sandbags. There, they had boxes of U.S.-made ammunition, medicines and copies of the Quran stashed on shelves.

The Associated Press obtained extensive video footage of the tunnels, which were uncovered by Kurdish forces that took the city in northwestern Iraq earlier this month after more than a year of IS rule.

“We found between 30 and 40 tunnels inside Sinjar,” said Shamo Eado, a commander from Sinjar from the Iraqi Kurdish fighters known as peshmerga. “It was like a network inside the city.”

“Daesh dug these trenches in order to hide from airstrikes and have free movement underground as well as to store weapons and explosives,” Eado said using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group. “This was their military arsenal.”

The video, shot by a freelancer touring the town with Kurdish fighters, showed two tunnels running several hundred meters (yards), each starting and ending from houses, through holes knocked in walls or floors.