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Irbil/Iraq – Iraqi troops aided by U.S. airstrikes entered the besieged town of Amerli Sunday, residents and Iraqi officials said, after a months-long blockade by Islamic State militants that had surrounded the Shiite Turkmen village and raised fears of an impending massacre.
“Amerli has been liberated,” said Mahdi Taqi, a local politician and Amerli resident who was inside the town during the siege. “There is so much joy and people are cheering in the streets.”
Jihadists had surrounded the town in June, preventing food and other aid from reaching the population there. Residents had armed themselves to fend off the militants, who have made sweeping gains across the country in recent months, but critical supplies began to run low.
The U.S. strikes around Amerli in support of Iraqi troops on Saturday, and which the Pentagon said would be “limited in their scope and duration,” appeared to swiftly tilt the balance in favor of Iraqi government forces.
Militia leaders aiding the offensive and Iraqi government officials had said that a coordinated assault to clear the Islamic State-controlled towns around Amerli – and eventually the siege’s front line – began after nightfall in Iraq on Saturday.
Karim al-Nouri, a high-ranking official in the Badr Brigades, a large Shiite militia, said that around 7:30 p.m. Saturday, thousands of the militia’s fighters moved toward the nearby Sunni town of Suleiman Beg, thought to be under the Islamic State’s control. Nouri said the operation was carried out in collaboration with other armed groups, the Iraqi air force and army.
The U.S. strikes and coordinated humanitarian aid drop marked the second time this month that the United States has intervened militarily in Iraq to prevent a jihadist attack on thousands of trapped civilians.
Earlier this month, the U.S. military carried out limited airstrikes and humanitarian aid drops to helpKurdish pesh merga forces open a humanitarian corridor to thousands of Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority who were trapped by the militants on a mountain range in western Iraq.
The long-suffering residents of Amerli, an impoverished farming hamlet in northern Iraq, were relieved that help had finally arrived. Reports of the offensive, as well as U.S. airstrikes against the militants, had boosted morale in the Shiite town, which had accused Washington and Baghdad of failing to stop the siege.
“Everyone in Amerli saw the bombardment from their houses,” Mustafa Hassan Tayyeb, a resident of Amerli and colonel in the Iraqi army, said Sunday in a telephone interview.
He had been fighting the militants alongside his neighbors for about 80 days, he said, adding that the U.S. strikes against the militants on Saturday were very accurate and had destroyed a number of the militants’ vehicles.
“Our morale is very high. We resisted these people and we won,” said Taqi, the politician, when reached by telephone after the siege was broken Sunday. “Now all we need is food and water,” he said.
The Iraqi military had delivered aid and evacuated some vulnerable residents from the town over the past two months. But the assistance had limited impact, residents said.
Last week The U.N.’s representative in Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, expressed alarm about the situation and warned of a possible massacre should the Islamist militants overrun the town.
But outside experts and members of Iraq’s Sunni minority, have also warned of the potential for revenge attacks on area Sunnis, once Amerli is liberated, because Shiite militias with a history of involvement in Iraq’s sectarian bloodletting are playing a lead role in the ground offensive.
Last week, two Shiite militias the Peace Brigades, formerly known as the Mahdi Army, and the Badr Brigades said separately they had mobilized thousands of fighters to help break the Amerli siege.
Hakim al-Zamili, a Shiite lawmaker who has acted as a “general coordinator” for the Salaam Brigades, formerly known as the Mahdi Army, said Saturday that the militia’s fighters were starting to attack Sunni towns ringing Amerli, and in the control of Islamic State militants, in coordination with the Iraqi military and Kurdish pesh merga forces.
“This is a great day for Iraq,” said a resident of Amerli reached by phone. The connection dropped before he could give his name. “We thank the popular forces” for liberating Amerli he said, referring to the Shiite militias that helped battle the militants.
Reuters
