SINJAR, Iraq — Kurdish and Yazidi fighters retook Sinjar on Friday, on the second day of a major offensive to retake this city in northern Iraq, which has been under the brutal domination of the Islamic State for more than 15 months.
Kurdish peshmerga forces advanced to the center of the devastated city from the east, passing the rubble of homes and abandoned shops with battered metal storefronts. There they linked up with a Kurdish force that had advanced from the west, including fighters from a separatist group based in Syria known by the Kurdish abbreviation YPG, and from the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.
Members of the Yazidi religious minority, who were raped, enslaved and killed in large numbers after the Islamic State overran Sinjar in August 2014, took part in the fight.
Deafening bursts of celebratory gunfire erupted. A Yazidi militia fighter with a walrus mustache, Edo Qasim Shamo, proclaimed excitedly that the moment of his people's "liberation" was finally at hand.
But even as he spoke it was apparent that the city had not been entirely cleared of the Islamic State fighters or of the bombs they had planted. Exchanges of gunfire in the northern part of the city broke out not far away.
Shawkat Abdullah Haji, a private who had belts of ammunition draped around his neck, said he had been moving through Sinjar's streets since 9 a.m. He warned a visitor not to move north, into the heart of the city, because it was "not clear" yet.
As Kurdish combat engineers fanned out to clear a road south of the city of improvised explosive devices, the whistle of an incoming Islamic State mortar could be heard. The mortar fell short.
An amalgam of Kurdish and Yazidi forces joined in the assault, many of them flying separate flags. There were members of the Kurdish group Zeravani Force, led by Maj. Gen. Aziz Waisi, and Yazidi members of the Kurdish-led peshmerga. But fighters from an independent Yazidi militia led by Heydar Shesho also joined in the fight, as did the YPG.
The attack from the east began Friday morning when Waisi's fighters took down a large dirt wall they had erected across Highway 47, which the fighters had seized a day earlier. The peshmerga fighters had put up the barrier on Thursday after they seized a stretch of the road to protect against car bomb attacks by the Islamic State.
On Friday, however, it was the Kurds who were determined to advance. A large bulldozer with improvised armor bolted around the driver's cab arrived to remove the earth barrier.
A stream of Kurdish vehicle then raced toward the city. The columns include several armored personnel carriers and Humvees. But there were also sport utility vehicles and light trucks with machine guns bolted on the back.
Many of the vehicles carried special orange markings to identify them for U.S. warplanes.
The sky was azure as the attack began, an encouraging sign for the Kurds who have depended heavily on U.S. airstrikes to give them an edge over Islamic State fighters. No sound appeared more welcome to the peshmerga than the roar of an A-10 plane as it circled over the city before diving low on a strafing run.
Waisi's initial objective was a traffic circle east of the city. As the peshmerga approached the circle, they passed a mannequin dressed in a uniform, a marker the Kurds used to identify the previous line of advance for their comrades
After reaching the traffic circle, they pressed on. For weeks, U.S. warplanes have been trying to soften up the Islamic State for the impending Kurdish offensive. On Thursday, there were at least 30 strikes.
The results were clear. Many houses and buildings were severely damaged and entire blocks had turned into a field of debris.
According to one Yazidi fighter, several of his fellow fighters were killed when they went to check on their homes in a nearby village.
But that did not stop one group of happy Yazidis from doing the same, driving east on Highway 47 to spy from a safe distance on the homes on the outskirts of Sinjar they hope to return to. After looking longingly from their vehicles for a few moments, they turned around and sped away.
A German filmmaker who was embedded on the front line with the PKK fighters, entering from the west, said they faced almost no fight from the Islamic State.
"There was no resistance — I mean zero," said the filmmaker, Carsten Stormer.
"We ran down the hill, like in a raid, and the whole time I saw just one dead Daesh fighter," he said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. In his section of the fighting, he said, the PKK arrived first, and then the peshmerga.
In the hours before the taking of the city, PKK and peshmerga officials said, they intercepted radio traffic from the Islamic State fighters suggesting that their forces were deserting. They said they had heard the voice of an Islamic State leader berating his fighters, warning that deserters would be beheaded.
The military leader of the PKK, who goes by the nom de guerre Agit Kalari, said his forces had taken back the Sinjar mayor's office, other administrative offices, a major grain silo and the general hospital, as well as several neighborhoods inside the city.
"At 6 a.m. we were in Sinjar," he said inside a room fortified with sandbags, on the first line of defense inside the city. "We went in four hours before the peshmerga. After we liberated the city, the peshmerga drove up, inside their Toyota Hiluxes."