MESOP FOCUS : Islamic-jihadists seize Iraqi town of Sinjar from Kurds

REUTERS / AFP – August 3, 2014 – ERBIL-Hewlêr, Kurdistan region ‘Iraq’,— al-Qaeda linked Islamic-jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ISIS on Sunday wrested control of the northwestern Iraqi Kurdish town of Shengal (Sinjar in Arabic), near the Syrian border, from Kurdish Peshmerge forces, Kurdish officials said.”The (Kurdish) Peshmerge have withdrawn from Sinjar, ISIS has entered the city,” Kheiri Sinjari told AFP, using IS’ former Arabic acronym.

“They have raised their flag above government buildings,” the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party official said.Other officials confirmed the fall of the town, which lies between the Syrian border and Mosul, which is Iraq’s second city and has been under IS control since June 10.

“The Peshmerge have withdrawn to mountain areas and are getting reinforcements,” a high-ranking source in the Peshmerge said.Sinjar had sheltered thousands of people who were displaced by the huge offensive IS launched in the region nearly two months ago. Among them are many of Iraq’s minorities, such as Turkmen Shiites, Kurdish Yazidis and Shabak. “Thousands of people have already fled, some to nearby mountains still under Kurdish control and also towards Duhok,” in autonomous Kurdistan, another PUK official said.

He also said that Islamic State fighters destroyed the small Shiite shrine of Sayyeda Zeinab shortly after taking control of Sinjar. The jihadist group, which effectively controls much of Iraq’s Sunni heartland, posted pictures on the Internet of its forces patrolling the main street in Sinjar. Islamic State Sunni insurgents have captured two northern Iraqi towns and an oil field in their first major victory over Kurdish fighters, witnesses said on Sunday.

Kurdish forces poured in reinforcements, including special forces, to the town of Zumar this weekend to battle Islamic State fighters who had arrived from three directions on pickup trucks mounted with weapons, residents said. The militants later hoisted their black flag over buildings in Zumar, a ritual that has in the past been followed by the mass execution of captured opponents and the violent imposition of an ideology that even al-Qaeda finds excessive.