Kurdish forces backed by US-led warplanes have recaptured a large area in Iraq near the Syrian border in an offensive against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, a top US commander has said.
More than 50 air strikes in recent days by coalition aircraft "have resulted in allowing those [Kurdish] forces to manoeuvre and regain approximately 100 square kilometres of ground" near Sinjar, Lieutenant General James Terry, head of the US-led campaign against ISIL, told reporters on Thursday.
Kurdish Peshmerga forces said earlier that they had captured several villages and were rolling back the ISIL fighters around Sinjar in the country's northwest.
Masrur Barzani, chancellor of Kurdistan Region Security Council, said the Kurds had established a passageway to the
Sinjar Mountains so that thousands of people from the country's Yazidi minority who have been trapped there can flee.
Sinjar Mountains so that thousands of people from the country's Yazidi minority who have been trapped there can flee.
See the full story here, and also keep in mind that the truth of any information from this area of the world should be taken skeptically.
Nevertheless, this news seems to confirm that ISIS is seriously hurting, and perhaps on the verge of a collapse. The real question will be what happens to the Kurds once ISIS is vanquished, and how the ISIS and other extremist groups in Syria are dealt with.
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