Peshmerga fighters claim full control of city that had come to define the war for northern Iraq since it was seized 15 months ago

The white battle truck roared through the rubble-strewn centre of Sinjar, its improvised armour scraping against the asphalt, bomb-laden drums bouncing and a screaming gunman shaking his rifle at the sky.

“We have killed all [Islamic State],” the Peshmerga fighter said of the enemy that until hours earlier had aimed to use the truck as a suicide bomb against Kurdish forces. “Victory is ours. Sinjar is ours.”

By noon on Friday, the Kurdish Peshmerga had claimed full control of Sinjar, a city that had come to define the war for northern Iraq since it was seized by the jihadi group 15 months ago.

The fall of Sinjar laid bare the depravity of its conquerers, who killed or enslaved the Yazidi community that had lived here for several thousand years and forced survivors to flee to the ridgeline above. It exposed the shortcomings of the Kurdish forces, who had been tasked with protecting the city but retreated as danger neared. And it scattered across the Nineveh plains minorities who had coexisted since the dawn of civilisation but could not survive Isis.

Sinjar’s recapture appears to herald a new phase in the war. On the bombed streets of the city, a few locals had returned to inspect what was left of their homes. “It doesn’t matter that the house has been bombed,” said one man in front of his partly ruined home. “It matters that I can take my family out of the refugee camp. This is ours again.”

And on the mountain above, which in August last year had been a panorama of desperation and loss, the Iraqi Kurdish president, Massoud Barzani, stood claiming victory, suggesting that Sinjar could become part of the semi-autonomous Kurdish north.

“Sinjar was liberated by the blood of the Peshmerga and became part of Kurdistan,” Barzani said. “It’s time for the Yazidi girls to hold their heads up. Revenge has been taken for them.”

KR Security Council (@KRSCPress) President @masoud_barzani addresses the people of Sinjar following success of Operation #FreeSinjar. pic.twitter.com/tXbH2SIlut

Barzani was referring to the plight of hundreds of Yazidi women and girls who were seized by Isis as the militants invaded. The two government buildings where they were held, one a registry office and the second a hospital, now stood partially demolished, police and Peshmerga forces unwilling to enter for fear that they had been booby-trapped.

“These were like cattle yards,” said Cpl Falaa, a Yazidi member of the Iraqi police who returned to his home town on Friday. “What they did to girls here was beyond shame. It was against humanity. They separated them into groups of those who were married and those who were single. They had no mercy.”

The plights of Sinjar’s women has haunted its residents. Many of the women were forced to marry Isis fighters. Peshmerga forces who entered the city said they were making an extra effort to free them from their captors.

The end of Isis rule came surprisingly easily. Fighter jets that had steadily picked off targets in the city over the past year intensified their attacks from Wednesday night. By Friday there was little left in the city to hit. Nearly every home had been damaged, roads had been pockmarked with craters, and power lines criss-crossed rubble like fallen spider webs.

Another Iraqi policeman, Cpl Ismael, also a Yazidi, picked his way through the litter of the war as he outlined how he and his family, who were in a refugee camp near Duhok, would soon try their luck on the migrant route across the Mediterranean. “I have saved all the money and soon I can get them out,” he said. “It is better to die in the ocean near Turkey than to come back to this.”

He thumbed through an identification card from a local man who had been captured by Isis. Another piece of paper detailed the names, fighters and fingerprints of Isis men in town. Then came dog-eared photos of five girls, resting incongruously amid shattered concrete blocks and a twisted piece of a car.

Will killing Mohammed Emwazi have any effect on Isis? Read more

A mortar jutted from the tar in the middle of one road, a hand grenade lay nearby, along with a scarf, a woman’s pink shoe and a rotting blanket. “We covered one of the dead terrorists with it,” said a Peshmerga officer. “There were around 20 dead on this street.”

Bulldozers ploughed through the roads, scattering the ruins of battle to one side, as fighters lit fires in cans to prepare for a late autumn night in a powerless but free city. “They’re only one kilometre away,” said Falaa, pointing to the south-east. But they can’t come back. They are beaten.”

Kurdish forces claim to have cut off Isis supply line near Sinjar in Iraq Read more

On the mountain, a trickle of returning Yazidis made their way amid Peshmerga forces, a Yazidi battalion who fought alongside the Kurds, and a Kurdish militia, the YPG from Syria, which had led the Yazidis to safety in northern Iraq last August. Four white vans carrying well-armed western men stopped by the side of the road as convoys of fighters and refugees passed. A fighter jet circled above.

Peshmerga fighters who flashed victory signs all afternoon were quick to point out that they, and not the Iraqi army, had pushed Isis back. Their stated goal was to cut the supply line linking Mosul, in Iraq, to Raqqa, in eastern Syria, both of which are centres of gravity for the terror group that the US and its allies have long aspired to recapture.

“This shows what we can do,” said a senior Kurdish official. “We acknowledge the failings of last summer [2014], but they were command and control issues and they have been sorted out. The Americans know that we are reliable and that the Iraqi army still isn’t. But if they want us to take Mosul, it will be on our terms. We are not agents. And we are not naive.”

Outside a makeshift medical centre that was being used to treat wounded Peshmerga, a Yazidi doctor who had worked with the Kurds for the past year said: “There are men inside dying and there others who have died. But it is worth it. Tyranny has gone. We can shape the future now.”