Air support: Other Support: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (Leader) 8,000 Peshmerga soldiers 500–800 PKK Soldiers Major insurgent attacks Foreign interventions IS genocide of minorities IS war crimes Timeline The Sinjar offensive was a combination of operations of Kurdish Peshmerga, PKK and People's Protection Units forces in December 2014, to recapture regions formerly lost to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in their August offensive.

[13] On 17 December 2014, at 7 AM (04.00 GMT), Peshmerga forces, directed personally by Masoud Barzani, the President of Iraqi Kurdistan,[8] launched an offensive on the Sinjar area, backed by US-led coalition airstrikes that had started the night before.

[2] On 18 December, the Peshmerga advanced even farther and managed to recapture a total of 700 square kilometers of territory and open a corridor from Zummar to Mount Sinjar, thus breaking the 'partial siege' of those mountains.

According to a statement from the Kurdish command, large numbers of ISIL militants were fleeing, westward into Syria, and eastward into Mosul.

[18] Simultaneously, Peshmerga forces on Mount Sinjar started pushing northward and captured Snuny, located on the road to Rabia.

[21] On 21 December, 1,500 Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, backed by local militia units, reportedly drove ISIL from the center of Sinjar.

[20] The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that ISIL had killed a total of 200 of its own fighters in December 2014, for fleeing the battlefield.

[29] In March 2015, ISIL again executed 18 of its own fighters in northern Iraq, amid accusations that the men texted the Kurdish enemy and planned on surrendering, SOHR reported.