ISIS takes wounded and dead from Shingal battle to Mosul

SHINGAL, Kurdistan Region – ISIS ordered Mosul hospitals to only treat wounded militants, Kurdish intelligence said Friday, as more than 300 wounded jihadists were transferred to the city after Peshmerga forces pushed the militants out of Shingal (Sinjar).

At least 126 bodies of militants of the Islamic State were taken to ISIS-held Mosul, after the Peshmerga launched a three-pronged assault that forced the militants out of the Kurdish-Yezidi town they had occupied since August last year.

“Sinjar is liberated by the Peshmerga. I congratulate the people of Kurdistan, especially the Yezidis,” Kurdish President Masoud Barzani told reporters in Shingal Friday, after ISIS was driven out of the town.

Several thousand Peshmerga soldiers took part in the two-day offensive that regained Shingal city, where ISIS unleashed a rampage of murder, looting and the kidnapping of girls and women when it invaded in August 2014.

“Some 126 militants have been moved to the Mosul State Hospital,” Ismat Rajab who is the exiled director of the Kurdistan Democratic Party’s (KDP) office in Mosul, told Rudaw.

He said he based his information on intelligence his party had gathered from Mosul, some 100 kilometers from regional capital, Erbil.

Another KDP official, Fariq Farooq, director of the party’s Amedi office, said some 300 wounded militants have been relocated and are being treated in Mosul’s hospital.

A Peshmerga commander in Shingal, Col. Ali Usman, told Rudaw on Thursday that at least two Peshmerga soldiers died in the offensive, in which hundreds of militants were reportedly killed.

Peshmerga military sources have told Rudaw that at least three militants were captured during the offensive, but the Peshmerga ministry has so far refrained from commenting on the reports.    

Rudaw correspondents quoted Kurdish military sources as saying Thursday that coalition airstrikes targeted ISIS between Shingal and the township of Baaj, killing dozens of militants.