Update: Kurdish forces cut strategic roads near Sinjar in northern Iraq

Iraqi Kurdish security forces on Thursday cut strategic supply lines between the stronghold of Islamic State (IS) militants in the town of Sinjar and other IS strongholds in Mosul and neighboring Syria, a Kurdish security source said.

The troops, known as Peshmerga, backed by international aircraft, began a major offensive in the morning and managed to seize the main road between Sinjar, which located some 100 km west of Mosul, and the nearby IS-held town of Tal Afar in east of Sinjar, while other troops took control of the main roads in west of the town, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

So far, the Kurdish operation successfully cut the supply route between Syria and the IS bastion of Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province which itself located about 400 km north of Baghdad, the source said.

During the day, the Kurdish troops foiled IS attacks by four suicide truck bombs when they detonated the attackers before they reach the positions of the Kurdish forces, the source said.

The troops also managed to capture the cement factory, just east of Sinjar after fierce clashes with the IS militants who withdrew toward the town, leaving at least 11 bodies of their militants, the source added.

Another Kurdish security source confirmed that intelligence reports said there are between 350 to 400 IS militants inside Sinjar, including some suicide bombers, but there is also a great deal of fear and confusion among the militants and their leaders who were forced to withdraw to new positions inside Sinjar, while many others fled the town through the desert in south of the town to Ba'aj and other areas.

Earlier in the day, a Kurdish security source told Xinhua that the major offensive to free Sinjar from IS militants was carried out under the supervision of Masoud Barzani, the president of the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan, adding that some 6,000 paramilitary Yazidis are taking part in the offensive to free their town from the extremist militants.

The Yazidi minority are primarily ethnic Kurds whose religion incorporates elements of many faiths. There are about 600,000 Yazidis living in Iraq with around 80 percent of them living in the towns of Sinjar and Ba'shika in the Nineveh province.

Nineveh's towns of Sinjar, Zumar and Sunoni are parts of the disputed areas of mixed ethnicities of Kurds, Arabs, Turkmans and others.

The Kurds demanded the expansion of their sovereign 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 request was fiercely opposed by the Iraqi government. Endit