Sinjar was overrun more
than a year ago by IS who massacred and enslaved thousands of Yazidis -
regarded as devil worshippers by the extremists.
The onslaught prompted
Barack Obama to authorise the first airstrikes against Islamic State in August
2014, saying he was acting to prevent a genocide of the Yazidis.
Kurdish and US forces have
launched an offensive to retake Sinjar in northern Iraq from Islamic State - and
cut off a vital supply route for the militants.
US-led coalition airstrikes
have been pounding IS-held areas in the town as around 7,500 Kurdish special
forces, Peshmerga and Yazidi fighters descend from Sinjar mountain towards the
frontline.
They travelled in a convoy
made up of humvees on flatbed trucks, heavy artillery and fighters waving
Kurdish flags and brandishing their rifles - winding past abandoned cars and
bloodstained clothing on the road many of them had used to flee IS in 2014.
On the frontline, just 300m
from Islamic State fighters, Loqman Ibrahim, head of a Yazidi battalion under
Peshmerga command, told Reuters he heard militants urging each other to fight
to the death and that an order was given not to "withdraw from the caliphate".
Operation Free Sinjar aims
to cordon off the town, which sits on the main highway between Mosul and Raqqa
- the main IS bastions in Iraq and Syria.
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