SHINGAL, Kurdistan Region – Peshmerga forces are locked in house-to-house battles with the Islamic State (ISIS) in Shingal, as they try to cut off the militants’ supply line with heavy artillery.
Kurdish forces have fortified their positions on Mount Shingal itself and a number of hills around the Yezidi town, captured by ISIS in August. They have also dug trenches protected with sand bags facing the town.
“The militants fire back daily and hope to push the Peshmerga forces away,” said a commander on the edge of the town. “But we will keep fighting until we clear every house,” he added.
Several thousand Peshmerga forces launched a massive operation against ISIS last month, capturing more than 2,500 square kilometers, starting with the Kurdish Yezidi town of Sinune near the Syrian border and dozens of villages.
But the militants are deeply entrenched in Shingal, whose proximity to the ISIS stronghold of Mosul has provided the fighters with a steady supply of reinforcements.
On the front, Kurdish and ISIS snipers watch each other’s movements closely, shooting at every opportunity.
A Peshmerga sniper on a hilltop, watching the town below through an opening in a wall of sand bags, said that only a handful of jihadi militants are left in the town, and they are the ones putting up a fight.
In the to-and-fro of war, Kurdish forces move in and take positions inside homes, as the militants fight to keep every inch of the town they still control.
By night the rival forces move closer to each other, as they set up ambushes near each other’s frontlines, one Kurdish soldier said.
He explained that the Peshmerga try to keep several hundred meters away from the enemy as they do not want to get caught in “friendly fire” by coalition jets bombing ISIS positions.
From any hill, smoke can be seen rising from many parts of the town from artillery fire and airstrikes.
To relieve the pressure on its forces in Shingal, several times over the past two weeks ISIS has launched failed attacks with car bombs and tanks on the Peshmerga in the Gwer-Makhmour area.
A Kurdish officer said that the jihadis have also used surveillance drones in Shingal to gather information on Peshmerga deployments.
“But we fired on the drone and they haven’t flown it in the last two days,” he said.
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