10-05-2017, 03:03 AM
BAGHDAD, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Iraqi forces have captured the town of Hawija and the surrounding area from Islamic State, the military said in a statement on Thursday.
With the capture of Hawija, the militants’ last stronghold in northern Iraq, the only area that remains under control of Islamic State in Iraq is a stretch alongside the western border with Syria. Hawija is close to the oil-city of Kirkuk.
The offensive on Hawija was carried out by U.S.-backed Iraqi government troops and Iranian-trained and armed Shi’ite paramilitary groups known as Popular Mobilisation.
“The army’s 9th armored division, the Federal Police, the Emergency Response division and (..) Popular Mobilisation liberated Hawija,” said a statement from the joint operations commander, Lieutenant-General Abdul Ameer Rasheed Yarallah.
Iraq launched an offensive on Sept. 21 to dislodge Islamic State from the area north of Baghdad where up to 78,000 people were estimated to be trapped, according to the United Nations.
The militants continue to control the border town of al-Qaim and the region surrounding it. They also hold parts of Syrian side of the border, but the area under their control is shrinking as they retreat in the face of two different sets of hostile forces - a U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led coalition and Syrian government troops with foreign Shi’ite militias backed by Iran and Russia. Islamic State’s cross-border “caliphate” effectively collapsed in July, when U.S.-backed Iraqi forces captured Mosul, the group’s de facto capital in Iraq, in a grueling battle which lasted nine months.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/iraq...mg00000009
With the capture of Hawija, the militants’ last stronghold in northern Iraq, the only area that remains under control of Islamic State in Iraq is a stretch alongside the western border with Syria. Hawija is close to the oil-city of Kirkuk.
The offensive on Hawija was carried out by U.S.-backed Iraqi government troops and Iranian-trained and armed Shi’ite paramilitary groups known as Popular Mobilisation.
“The army’s 9th armored division, the Federal Police, the Emergency Response division and (..) Popular Mobilisation liberated Hawija,” said a statement from the joint operations commander, Lieutenant-General Abdul Ameer Rasheed Yarallah.
Iraq launched an offensive on Sept. 21 to dislodge Islamic State from the area north of Baghdad where up to 78,000 people were estimated to be trapped, according to the United Nations.
The militants continue to control the border town of al-Qaim and the region surrounding it. They also hold parts of Syrian side of the border, but the area under their control is shrinking as they retreat in the face of two different sets of hostile forces - a U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led coalition and Syrian government troops with foreign Shi’ite militias backed by Iran and Russia. Islamic State’s cross-border “caliphate” effectively collapsed in July, when U.S.-backed Iraqi forces captured Mosul, the group’s de facto capital in Iraq, in a grueling battle which lasted nine months.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/iraq...mg00000009
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.