Iraq forces assault last IS bastion

BAGHDAD — Iraqi troops launched an assault on the last Islamic State group bastion in the country yesterday even as the Kurds said Baghdad's forces had attacked their fighters near the border with Turkey.

There had been fears that the bitter dispute that has raged between the Baghdad government and Iraqi Kurdish leaders since they held a referendum for independence last month would hamper the campaign against the jihadists.

But federal troops and allied paramilitaries pressed ahead with a threatened drive up the Euphrates valley towards the Syrian border in a bid to retake two Sunni Arab towns that have been bastions of insurgency since soon after the US-led invasion of 2003.

The US-led coalition battling IS said it was "the last big fight" against the jihadists.

Iraqi forces have retaken more than 90 percent of the territory IS seized in the country in 2014, with the jihadists now confined to a small stretch of the valley adjoining some of the last areas they still hold in Syria.

"The heroic legions are advancing into the last den of terrorism in Iraq to liberate Al-Qaim, Rawa and the surrounding villages and hamlets," Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi said in a statement from neighboring Iran where he is on a state visit.

"They will all return to the arms of the motherland thanks to the determination and endurance of our fighting heroes," he added.

"The people of IS have no choice but to die or surrender."

Al-Qaim has been renowned as a bastion of Sunni Arab insurgency for years.

Coalition troops carried out repeated operations with names like Matador and Steel Curtain in 2005 to flush out AlQaeda jihadists.

The town lies at the heart of a wealthy agricultural region and was once a railhead for the phosphate mining center of Akhashat in the desert to the south.

In the era of Saddam Hussein, AlQaim's huge chemical factory treated uranium to feed Iraq's nuclear program.