Iraqi forces retake IS bastion of Hawija

IRAQI forces retook one of Islamic State last two enclaves in the country on yesterday, overrunning the longtime insurgent bastion of Hawija after a two-week offensive.

Only a stretch of the Euphrates Valley near the border with Syria remains to be retaken from the jihadists who have suffered defeat after defeat in Iraq this year.

“I announce the liberation of the city of Hawija,” Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said. “All that remains is the strip on the border with Syria.”

The operation’s commander, Lieutenant General Abdel Amir Yarallah, had earlier announced that troops, police and paramilitaries had retaken the city centre.

Hawijah, 230 kilometres north of Baghdad, was at the centre of a pocket of mainly Sunni Arab towns that were among the final holdouts from the territory seized by the jihadists in 2014.

The town had been an insurgent bastion since soon after the US-led invasion of 2003, earning it the nickname of “Kandahar in Iraq” for the ferocious resistance it put up similar to that in the Taliban militia’s citadel in Afghanistan. The area’s mainly Sunni Arab population is deeply hostile both to the Shiite-led government in Baghdad and to the Kurds who form the historic majority in adjacent areas.

Government forces bypassed it in their advance north to second city Mosul last year, which culminated in the jihadists’ defeat in the emblematic bastion in July.

“This a victory not only for Iraqis but also for the whole world,” Abadi said.

There was no word on the fate of civilians in Hawija.

The UN said this week that an estimated 12,500 people had fled since the launch of the offensive to retake the town and surrounding areas last month.The UN has said the number of people still in the town was unknown but could be as high as 78,000.

The Norwegian Refugee Council said many of those arriving in the camps had little more than the clothes on their backs.

“In addition to the terror they have experienced during years under the control of the IS group, many of the families who are arriving are malnourished,” its acting area manager, Silvia Beccacece, said.

Coalition spokesman Ryan Dillon hailed the latest advance on Twitter, saying Iraqi forces were continuing “to crush ISIS in Hawija pocket” and Abadi’s pledge to “liberate all Iraqi territory and to cleanse it from terrorists” was “close” to being fulfilled.