WASHINGTON — A new offensive against the Islamic State began Thursday in Iraq, with Kurdish Iraqi fighters and U.S.-led airstrikes combining in an effort to take back the town of Sinjar, Iraq.
The town serves as a key post along the ISIS supply line. The offensive also marks a change in the United States’ strategy to combat the militants.
U.S. military spokesman Col. Steve Warren tells CBS News that U.S. advisers are working with peshmerga spotters to develop targets for what’s being called Operation Free Sinjar. They’ve been there for a while, but reinforcements arrived about a week ago as Peshmerga forces moved into position for the assault, CBS News reports.
Airstrike pounds suspected #Isis target in #sinjar. Offensive underway. #FreeSinjar pic.twitter.com/VUXNinCWhk
— Charlie D’Agata (@charliecbs) November 12, 2015
“All of the US advisers are staying well away from the very front lines, not in a position where they will encounter any direct contact with the enemy,” Warren said.
He adds that Kurds and Americans alike believe it’s going to be a tough fight.
“We’ve intercepted some communications that indicate the enemy has told its fighters to ‘stand until the end.’”
Sinjar sits between Islamic State headquarters in Raqqa, Syria, and a stronghold in Mosul, Iraq.
“It’s a choke point, basically, between the two,” says WTOP National Security Correspondent J.J. Green. The town sits on Highway 47, which Green calls the main supply route that Islamic State fighters use “to ferry all sorts of weapons, fighters, food, illicit oil — everything they need.”
He adds that the U.S. has already launched 20 airstrikes so far.
Islamic State militants overran the town in 2014, massacring thousands of Yazidi men, raping and abducting thousands of Yazidi women and forcing more Yazidis to flee to the mountains — a development that led to the first U.S. airstrikes against the Islamic State.
Green says the military says the fighting will take two to four days, but that’s only the first phase.
Of Islamic State and their sympathizers, Green says, “whenever they’re forced out of someplace, they leave behind calling cards — all sorts of booby traps (on) bombs, roads, buildings. So this is all going to take a while to clear out.”
CBS News Pentagon correspondent Cami McCormick tells WTOP that the Kurdish forces have used antitank weapons to destroy truck bombs left by the militants. The forces will likely encounter more of the bombs as well as minefields the militants have laid out during their roughly yearlong occupation of the town.
Hundreds of ISIS fighters are believed to be entrenched in Sinjar. But they face thousands of Kurds, who tried to surround the town and have opened three fronts of attack, McCormick says.
McCormick says that he United States is trying to open several fronts against ISIS instead of fighting in one spot at a time.
“Now the strategy has evolved a bit and is focusing on several different areas. So while we see this offensive now underway here, we may also see some other offensives take place, say in Syria, in Raqqa itself.”
