Iraq forces retake Tal Afar center and citadel from IS
BAGHDAD — Iraqi forces battling to drive the Islamic State group from its Tal Afar bastion said yesterday they had recaptured the city center and raised the country's flag atop its Ottoman-era citadel.
"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 converged on the city center from the south and west, said Yarallah. Clashes were ongoing on the northern outskirts and Iraqi forces were dealing with the final pockets of resistance inside the city, he added.
Yesterday's advance put Iraqi forces on the verge of recapturing Tal Afar only six days after they launched an offensive to take back one of the last IS strongholds in the country. It followed weeks of Iraqi and US-led coalition air strikes.
Tal Afar is located 70 kilometers (40 miles) west of Mosul, where the jihadist group declared its "caliphate" in 2014 before being ousted from the city in July. It had 200,000 residents and is on a strategic road that linked IS-held territories in Syria with Mosul.
Iraqi forces on Saturday also seized three northern districts of Tal Afar and the Al-Rabia neighborhood west of the citadel, a day after taking the Al-Talia district to the south.
The jihadist group has lost much of the territory it controlled and thousands of its fighters have been killed.