August 03:
The Islamic State (IS) Sunni insurgent group captured the town of Sinjar in Iraq's northern province of Nineveh in latest battles with Kurdish forces, just a day after the town of Zumar was confirmed seized by IS militants in addition to small oilfields in the area, an official and a security source said on Sunday.
The IS militants entered Sinjar, some 100 km west of Nineveh's provincial capital city of Mosul, in the morning after clashes with the Kurdish security forces, known as Peshmerga, a provincial security source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
"The militants raised the black flag of the IS on the buildings of the local government and the town's municipality," the source said.
Thousands of families in the town have left their homes to the nearby Sinjar mountain and the city of Zakho in the semi- autonomous region of Kurdistan, the source said.
The majority of the town of Sinjar are from the Yazidi minority, which is primarily an ethnic Kurd. The religion of Yazidis incorporates elements of many faiths, as a result of some of their beliefs and the mystery surrounding their religion, many Muslims and non-Muslims have considered Yazidis as infidels. This has led to violent attacks by extremist Islamist groups against the minority.
There are about 600,000 Yazidis remaining in Iraq with roughly 80 percent of them living in the towns of Sinjar and Bashika in Nineveh province.
Separately, Mohammed Ibrahim al-Baiyati, head of security committee of Nineveh province, told Xinhua that the IS militants are in full control of the town of Zumar, some 70 km northwest of Mosul, since early Saturday after fierce battles with the Peshmerga who controlled the area.
The IS militants also seized many villages around Zumar and nearby small oilfields of Ayn Zala, Butma and others, in addition of taking control of the strategic oil pipelines which Iraq used to pump crude exported via Turkey.
Al-Baiyati said that fierce clashes are underway on Sunday around the town of Rabia, near the border with Syria, while thousands of families are leaving their homes toward Peshkhabour and Zakho in Kurdistan region.
Zumar and Sinjar are part of the disputed areas which are ethnically mixed areas of Kurds, Arabs, Turkmans and others. The Kurds demanded to expand their autonomous region in northern Iraq to include the oil-rich province of Kirkuk and other areas in the Iraqi provinces of Nineveh, Salahudin and Diyala, but their move is fiercely opposed by Baghdad government.
The security situation has begun to drastically deteriorate in Iraq since bloody clashes broke out on June 10 between the Iraqi security forces and hundreds of Sunni militants who took control of Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad, and later seized swathes of territories after the Iraqi security forces abandoned their posts in Nineveh and other predominantly Sunni provinces.
Source: www.china.org.cn/world/2014-08/03/content_33133747.htm?
Comments
Post a Comment