Kurdish peshmerga fighters have secured a route to Iraq's Sinjar mountain, where hundreds of people had been trapped by Islamic State fighters, Masrour Barzani, head of the Iraqi Kurdish region's national security council, said on Thursday.
"The peshmerga have managed to reach the mountain. A vast area has been liberated," Barzani said, adding that 100 Islamic State fighters had been killed. "Now a corridor is open and hopefully the rest of the (Sinjar) region will be freed from Islamic State."
The assault ended the months-long ordeal of hundreds of Iraq's Yazidi religious minority, who had been trapped on the mountain since Islamic State stormed Sinjar and other Kurdish-controlled parts of northern Iraq in August.