ISIS vs Kurds in Sinjar News: Kurdish Fighters Unearth Mass Graves
Two mass graves have been unearthed by the Kurds just outside Sinjar, the town reclaimed from Islamic State fighters last Friday morning.
The Associated Press (via CBS News) says one of the graves contained 78 bodies of elderly women believed to have been brutalized before being killed by the jihadists. Another grave revealed around 50 or 60 bodies of not only men and women but also children who experienced the atrocities in their town. Sinjar Director of Intelligence Qasim Samir confirmed the news.
The people of Sinjar have been brutally abused and taken under control for more than 15 months by the ISIS, and while the town is one of the key villages that belongs to the extremists, it has finally been redeemed by Kurdish fighters and Yazidis who joined hands to relieve their people from bondage.
As if to remind the people of how God saved Israelites from the bondage in Egypt through Moses, numerous Yazidis and Kurds, who have initially left their town to flee the war, came rushing back in the past several months to help reclaim the war-weary village.
According to BBC News, about 7,500 Iraqi Kurds, plus Yazidi fighters and members of the Turkish Kurdistan Workers' Party, a.k.a PKK, united and took part in the ground offensives that started Thursday and finally ended on Friday.
Experts believe that the fighters' bravery, backed by memories of struggle, bloodshed, and seeing their women being forced into sexual slavery, are what fueled the passion for taking down ISIS strongholds.
Several outlets report that the remaining ISIS fighters left in the town might have escaped through the only road open at the time of the clashes: the south route. Choosing to stay in the city would have totally eradicated all extremists positioned in Sinjar.
An estimated 600 ISIS fighters were in the city before the offensive began at dawn, and while it has yet to be confirmed how many have been taken down or escaped, about 60 to 70 are believed to have been killed during airstrike attacks on Thursday.
Sinjar was seized by the ISIS in August of last year, and until last week's recapture, the townspeople have been held under the extreme Islam beliefs of the terrorists.