Thousands flee town as Daesh loses grip
Area of Hit strategically important as it sits along supply line linking extremist militants in Iraq with those in Syria
HIT, IRAQ— Iraqi forces have entered the town of Hit, a week after launching an operation to retake the western town from Daesh (also known as ISIS and ISIL), commanders at the scene said Monday.
Iraq’s elite counterterrorism forces, who are leading the offensive, said they are clearing Daesh fighters from Hit’s northern neighbourhoods as they push in toward the town centre.
Iraqi and coalition officials say Hit — which lies along the Euphrates River valley in Iraq’s vast Anbar province — is strategically important as it sits along a Daesh supply line that links the extremist militants in Iraq to those in Syria.
Thousands of civilians fled Hit as Iraqi troops advanced under cover of airstrikes and artillery fire. Families, many with children and elderly relatives, said they had walked for hours through desert littered with roadside bombs to escape the violence.
Iraqi forces began escorting families out of Hit in the early morning Monday. Azha Hadel and her three young children walked for five hours from her neighbourhood in northern Hit to the city’s outskirts, where they were loaded into open trucks by Iraqi security forces.
“Honestly we have no idea where we are going,” Hadel said, her and her children’s faces sunburned from the long day outdoors. “We want to go anywhere, anywhere that’s safe.”
Iraqi counterterrorism forces at the scene said the families were being brought to a nearby camp.
Behind Hadel, black smoke rose from Hit as buildings and vehicles hit by airstrikes burned. Hundreds more civilians were slowly walking out of the town by the evening. Iraqi troops, who had spent hours clearing the territory before their assault, instructed families not to stray from the tire marks to avoid explosives. Nearby, two bodies of Daesh fighters lay unburied. They had been shot Sunday attempting to carry out a suicide attack on the advancing Iraqi convoy, according to Iraqi commanders at the scene.
Iraq’s counterterrorism forces estimate more than 20,000 civilians remain trapped inside Hit. The large number of people in such a small area is making it difficult to quickly clear territory with airstrikes.
On Sunday, the U.S.-led coalition launched three airstrikes that targeted Daesh fighters, a car bomb and a heavy machine-gun, the Pentagon said in a statement.
The Hit offensive comes after a string of territorial victories for Iraqi forces over the past six months. Most recently Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, was declared fully “lib- erated” by Iraqi and coalition officials in February.
Coalition officials estimate Daesh has lost more than 40 per cent of the territory it held in Iraq after the summer of 2014.