Iraq battles ISIS at ‘gates of hell’ US slams jihadists’ safe passage deal
Baghdad says fighting jihadists to retake town of al-Ayadia near Tal Afar worse than Mosul
Iraqi forces battling to retake the small town of al-Ayadiya where militants fleeing Tal Afar have entrenched themselves, saying on Tuesday the fighting is “multiple times worse” than the battle for Mosul’s old city.
Hundreds of battle-hardened fighters were positioned inside most houses and high buildings inside the town, making it difficult for government forces to make any progress, army officers said.
Iraqi government troops captured the town of Mosul from Islamic State in June, but only after eight months of grinding urban warfare.
But one Iraqi officer, Colonel Kareem al-Lami, described breaching the militants’ first line of defence in al-’Ayadiya as like opening “the gates of hell”.
Iraqi forces have in recent days recaptured almost all of the northwestern city of Tal Afar, long a stronghold of Islamic State.
They have been waiting to take al-’Ayadiya, just 11 km northwest of the city, before declaring complete victory.
Tough resistance from the militants in al’Ayadiya has forced the Iraqi forces to increase the number of air strikes, as well as bring in reinforcements from the federal police to boost units from the Army, Air Force, federal police, the elite US-trained counter-terrorism service (CTS) and some units from the Shi’ite Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF). Beirut, Aug. 30: A US official on Wednesday blasted a deal that led to the evacuation of hundreds of Islamic State group fighters and civilians from the Lebanon-Syria border to areas close to Iraq, saying the extremists should be killed on the battlefield.
The evacuation agreement, the first such publicised deal, had already angered many Iraqis who accused Syria and Lebanon’s Hezbollah of dumping the militants on the Iraqi border rather than eradicating them.
The top US envoy for the international coalition against ISIS, Brett McGurk, tweeted on Wednesday that ISIS “terrorists should be killed on the battlefield, not bused across #Syria to the Iraqi border without #Iraq’s consent.” Mr McGurk added that the anti-ISIS coalition will help ensure that “these terrorists can never” enter Iraq.
Lebanese troops launched an attack against ISIS on August 18 while Syrian troops and Hezbollah fighters launched a simultaneous offensive from the Syrian side of the border. Once ISIS extremists were squeezed over the week end in a small part of the border area they agreed to a cease-fire.
Lebanon has defended its stance of not totally crushing ISIS saying that the evacuation of ISIS militants from the area helped in revealing the fate of nine soldiers that the extremists kidnapped in 2014.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun declared victory against ISIS on Wednesday in a live statement form the presidential palace.
Aoun praised the Lebanese army for carrying out the operation.