Hundreds rescued as Kurdish forces punch through Islamic State siege

Kurdish Peshmerga open land corridor through Islamic State territory

In the ongoing war with the Islamic State, Kurdish Peshmerga forces have reported a victory in northern Iraq.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The Kurdish military says it has recaptured territory near the Sinjar Mountain, the site of the dramatic airdrops that saved the besieged Yazidis during the summer.

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Reports say that the Peshmerga has "cleansed" the region of Islamists, and points to coalition airstrikes as a major factor.

This is the single largest and most successful offensive against the Islamic State so far, the Kurdistan Region Security Council said in a statement.

The U.S. headed coalition conducted 48 airstrikes near Sinjar during December 16 and 17, the largest number to date in such a span. U.S. officials report that the U.S. has conducted 1,300 airstrikes against the Islamic State since November in both Iraq and Syria.

These most recent airstrikes were used to support the advancing Peshmerga forces as they attempted to cut a wedge in the lines of the Islamic State and create a land corridor from Sinjar to northern Iraq.

"We have opened a corridor from south of Zummar to the Mountain Sinjar," said the chancellor of the Kurdistan Region Security Council, Masrour Barzani.

This operation also enabled Kurdish fighters to rescue the last few hundred Yazidis who remained trapped on the mountain.

The badly mauled Islamic State fighters fled towards the Syrian border, and strongholds within Iraq like Mosul.

"ISIS is always making damage, killed the people, steal the stuff, kidnapping people, taking money from people. That's what ISIS is doing, and that's not Islam," said Khalid Suleymen Kolah, a Peshmerga who was involved in the fighting.

American officials suspect that the ongoing campaign of airstrikes, combined with ground operations by Kurdish and other anti-Islamic State forces, has been effective.

"We're not seeing the broad offensive movement we saw in May and June," said U.S. General James Terry, the commander of Operation Inherent Resolve.

Terry said that U.S. intelligence is reporting that the Islamic State is having a difficult time keeping in communication with its fighters, and is barely able to resupply and feed them. There is also evidence that the Islamic State suffers from an "inability . to govern population centers," where the population is not in favor of the Islamist group.

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