Iraq forces take Tal Afar from ISIS
Baghdad, Aug. 26: Iraqi forces have driven the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) from central Tal Afar and its historic citadel, they said on Saturday, placing them on the verge of fully recapturing one of the last ISIS strongholds in the country.
The advance, just days into an assault on the strategic town, comes six weeks after Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared victory over the jihadists in second city Mosul, where the jihadist group declared its “caliphate” in 2014.
“Units of the counterterrorism service liberated the citadel and Basatin districts and raised the Iraqi flag on top of the citadel,” operation commander General Abdulamir Yarallah said in a statement.
The CTS and federal police units had also seized three northern districts and the Al-Rabia neighbourhood west of the citadel, a day after taking the district of Al-Talia to the south.
Clashes were ongoing on the northern outskirts and Iraqi forces were dealing with final pockets of jihadists inside the city, Yarallah said.
Government troops and units of the Hashed alShaabi paramilitary coalition, backed by a US-led coalition against IS, launched the assault on Sunday after weeks of coalition and Iraqi air strikes.
Tal Afar sits on a strategic route between ISIScontrolled territories in Syria and Mosul, 70 kilometres further east.
Progress there has been far more rapid than in Mosul, Iraq’s second city, which fell to Iraqi forces in July after a gruelling nine-month battle.
Officials have said they hope to announce victory in Tal Afar by Eid alAdha, the Muslim holiday set to start in Iraq on September 2.
Most of Tal Afar’s 200,000 residents, the majority of them Shiite Turkmens whose beliefs are anathema to the Sunni hardliners of ISIS, fled as the jihadists arrived.
Pro-government forces faced an obstacle course of roads blocked with earth embankments and strategically-parked trucks, as well as sniper fire and mortar shelling.