Sinjar Mountains

Turkey appears to be hoping that its bombing this week of Sinjar in Iraq and Rojava in northern Syria will enable it to intervene in those countries on a larger scale.

It has been revealed that both the American and the Russian military attachés were called to Turkish military headquarters in Ankara a short while before Turkish jets hit outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) positions on Sinjar Mountain in northern Iraq and northern Syria at 2 a.m. on April 25.

Take a look at the Turkey-Syria-Iraq map. Put one end of a compass between Mosul and Hasakah. Widen the other arm of the compass centimeter by centimeter… Draw a circle. Keep the radius of this circle at 150 to 200 kilometers. The problem is there.

ISIS killed and enslaved vast numbers of Yazidi people, a religious minority. Their brutal death at ISIS hands came to be known as the Sinjar Massacre. Thousands fled, whereas in the villages the older women were killed while thousands of younger women were raped and sold into slavery.

Kurdish and Yazidi fighters battled to take the strategic northern Iraqi town of Sinjar back from
Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on Dec. 21 after breaking a months-long siege of the mountain above it.

Seizing the town would restore the majority of territory Iraq's Kurds lost in the jihadist group's surprise August offensive.

Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani hailed victories over the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) during a visit on Dec. 21 to Mount Sinjar, which had been besieged by the militants for months.

Iraqi Kurds claimed Dec. 18 to have broken a siege on a mountain where Yazidi civilians and fighters have long been trapped as the US said air strikes killed several Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) leaders in recent weeks.
      

Militants of the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant (ISIL) have released a video that seeks to show it enlightened hundreds of members of the Yazidi minority by converting them to Islam.

The production was issued not long after the group on Aug. 19 released a video showing one of its black-clad fighters beheading American journalist James Foley, sparking international outrage.

Iraqi Yazidis are afraid to return to their ancestral lands due to fears of a future genocide, Feyyan Dahil, who has worked to bring attention to the plight of besieged members of her community, has said.
      

UN rights monitors called Tuesday for the global community to take urgent action to avoid a potential genocide against the Yazidi community in Iraq.
      
Thousands of members of the Yazidi religious minority are trapped on a mountain in northwestern Iraq with little food or water after Islamic State jihadists overran the region.