Kurds enter town held by Islamic State

BAGHDAD – Kurdish fighters backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes on Sunday entered the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, which has been held by Islamic State militants for months.

The campaign to retake the mountain town is the latest effort to regain ground lost to the Sunni extremist group during the summer, when it expanded from strongholds in neighboring Syria and seized large parts of northern and western Iraq.

So far in Sinjar, Kurdish peshmerga fighters have managed to clear a path to the mountain that overshadows town, allowing some of the thousands of Yazidi religious minorities trapped there since summer to evacuate.

That meant clearing mines and roadside bombs planted by the Islamic State, which they continued to do Sunday in an area covering more than 800 square miles, according to a Kurdistan regional government security council statement.

The council posted video of residents returning to their homes via the newly cleared road and praising both the airstrikes and the Kurdish fighters for fending off the Islamic State, known in Arabic as Daesh.

According to the council, airstrikes and the peshmerga have killed at least 250 Islamic State militants since the offensive started Wednesday, including 50 in Sinjar on Saturday.

The spokesman for Kurdish forces said Sunday that the fighters in Sinjar still were facing resistance from the militants.

“We have the city surrounded from all sides,” Jabar Yawar said, “but the Daesh terrorists are in the houses and they are fighting us from there. The operation is ongoing but has not ended.”

Three weekend airstrikes also hit Tall Afar, home to a military airport east of Sinjar near the Syrian border that Iraq has been trying to wrest from Islamic State control. The aerial attack targeted, among other sites, a building, checkpoint and six vehicles, according to a U.S. military statement.

In addition, strikes targeted areas near the northern city of Mosul, captured by Islamic State in June; the desert hamlet of Rutba; and Baiji, a refinery town.

In Syria, the U.S.-led coalition carried out at least five airstrikes over the weekend near Kobani, a city near the Turkish border, destroying eight Islamic State fighting positions, according to the U.S. military.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a pro-opposition network based in Britain, claimed that the coalition also had launched at least a dozen airstrikes against Islamic State-controlled towns in the northern Syrian province of Aleppo, where rebels and al-Qaida-linked groups fighting the Syrian government also have been battling the extremist movement for months.