Iraq Kurds block key IS supply line in battle for Sinjar

Iraqi Kurdish forces backed by US-led strikes blocked a key Islamic State group supply line with Syria Thursday as they battled to retake the town of Sinjar from the jihadists.

A permanent cut in the supply line would hamper IS's ability to move fighters and supplies between northern Iraq and Syria, two countries where the jihadists hold significant territory and have declared a "caliphate".

And retaking Sinjar -- where IS carried out a brutal campaign of killings, enslavement and rape against the Yazidi minority -- would also be an important symbolic victory.

Kurdish "peshmerga units successfully established blocking positions along Highway 47 and began clearing Sinjar," the US-led coalition against IS said in a statement, referring to the main route linking the jihadists' Iraqi hub of Mosul to Syria.

And the autonomous Kurdish region's security council (KRSC) also said the highway had been cut, and that multiple villages near Sinjar were retaken.

"The attack began at 7:00 am (0400 GMT), and the peshmerga forces advanced on several axes to liberate the centre of the Sinjar district," Major General Ezzeddine Saadun told AFP.

Huge columns of smoke rose over Sinjar as coalition strikes and Kurdish shelling targeted IS positions in the town.

Up to 7,500 Kurdish fighters are to take part in the operation, which aims to retake Sinjar "and establish a significant buffer zone to protect the (town) and its inhabitants from incoming artillery," the KRSC said.

"Coalition warplanes will provide close air support to peshmerga forces throughout the operation," it said.

The coalition carried out 24 strikes in the Sinjar area on Wednesday and eight more across the border in Syria's Al-Hol area.

Kurdish forces face an estimated 300 to 400 jihadists in the town, Captain Chance McCraw, a US military intelligence officer, told journalists in Baghdad.

But it is not just the jihadist fighters they will have to contend with: IS has had more than a year to build up networks of bombs, berms and other obstacles in Sinjar.

"This is part of the isolation of Mosul," the largest city in northern Iraq, Colonel Steve Warren, spokesman for the international operation against IS, said of the battle for Sinjar.

Caption: Representative Image

Photo: BBC