From a remote desert mountaintop in Iraq, Kurds battle to free a town held by Islamic State
FILE - In this Sunday, Dec. 21, 2014 file photo, Yazidi fighters gather on the summit of Mount Sinjar as they head to battle Islamic State militants, in Iraq. The Islamic State group swept into Sinjar town and surrounding villages in early August, part of their blitzkrieg across northern Iraq. The advance of the extremists struck particular fear here. Much of the population come from the minority Yazidi religious community, a tiny sect that the Sunni Muslim radicals consider heretics. Hundreds were killed. Hundreds of Yazidi women and girls were taken captive by the militants, turned into sex slaves or forcibly married to IS supporters in Syria and Iraq. (AP Photo/Dalton Bennett, File)(The Associated Press)
FILE - In this Sunday, Dec. 21, 2014 photo, Iraqi Kurdish forces head to battle Islamic State militants, on the summit of Mount Sinjar, in Iraq. The Islamic State group swept into Sinjar town and surrounding villages in early August, part of their blitzkrieg across northern Iraq. The advance of the extremists struck particular fear here. Much of the population come from the minority Yazidi religious community, a tiny sect that the Sunni Muslim radicals consider heretics. Hundreds were killed. Hundreds of Yazidi women and girls were taken captive by the militants, turned into sex slaves or forcibly married to IS supporters in Syria and Iraq. (AP Photo/Dalton Bennett, File)(The Associated Press)
FILE - In this Sunday, Dec. 21, 2014 file photo, Kurdistan Iraqi regional government President Massoud Barzani, center, arrives to support Kurdish forces as they head to battle Islamic State militants, on the summit of Mount Sinjar, in the town of Sinjar, Iraq. On Sunday, Barazani, visited the command center on the mountain top, vowing to his fighters that they would crush the Islamic State fighters wherever they find them. (AP Photo/Zana Ahmed, File)(The Associated Press)
FILE - In this Thursday, Dec. 18, 2014 file photo, bodies of Islamic State militants killed during fighting on Wednesday, when Kurdish forces pushed towards Sinjar Mountain, lie in a ditch in Koban, Iraq. The Islamic State group swept into Sinjar town and surrounding villages in early August, part of their blitzkrieg across northern Iraq. The advance of the extremists struck particular fear here. Much of the population come from the minority Yazidi religious community, a tiny sect that the Sunni Muslim radicals consider heretics. Hundreds were killed. Hundreds of Yazidi women and girls were taken captive by the militants, turned into sex slaves or forcibly married to IS supporters in Syria and Iraq. (AP Photo/Dalton Bennett, File)(The Associated Press)
MOUNT SINJAR, Iraq The road to the battlefront plunges straight down the steep face of Mount Sinjar, whipped by a fierce wind. It is littered with trucks and cars that couldn't get up that incline, abandoned by their owners months ago as they fled the rampage of Islamic State group extremists.
Clothes lie piled on the side of the road, left behind by fleeing families unable to carry them.
Over the past week, Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters have descended the mountain, battling to liberate the town of Sinjar, a tiny desert community in northern Iraq that the gunmen overran in August, massacring and enslaving hundreds of its residents.
An Associated Press correspondent was with the Kurds. This is his report.
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The fighting, which is still ongoing, has been fierce. One day this week, a Chevy Tahoe rushed up to a Kurdish position on the edge of town, blaring its horn and flashing its lights. The peshmerga fighters inside piled out with the body of a fellow Kurdish fighter hit by a militant sniper's bullet.
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From a remote desert mountaintop in Iraq, Kurds battle to free a town held by Islamic State