Iraqi forces retake centre of Hawija
HUMANITARIAN AGENCIES SET UP CAMPS CAPABLE OF RECEIVING OVER 70,000 PEOPLE
Troops, police and paramilitaries ‘liberate’ centre of the town, one of the last enclaves of Daesh in the country |
Iraqi forces said yesterday they had retaken the centre of Daesh’s stronghold of Hawija, one of the militants’ last enclaves in the country.
Troops, police and paramilitaries “liberated the whole of the centre of Hawija and are continuing their advance,” the operation’s commander, Lieutenant General Abdul Amir Yarallah, said. Government and allied forces launched an offensive last month to oust Daesh from Hawija, a longtime insurgent bastion.
The town is among the final holdouts from the territory seized by the militants in 2014 and its recapture would leave only a handful of remote outposts in Daesh hands. The United Nations said this week that an estimated 12,500 people had fled Hawija since the launch of the offensive to retake the town and surrounding areas last month.
The UN’s humanitarian affairs office said the number of people still in the town was unknown but could be as high as 78,000.
It said humanitarian agencies have set up checkpoints, camps and emergency sites capable of receiving more than 70,000 people who could flee.
Desperate situation
The Norwegian Refugee Council said many of those arriving in the camps had little more than the clothes on their backs.
“In addition to the terror they have experienced during years under the control of Daesh, many of the families who are arriving are malnourished,” its acting area manager, Silvia Beccacece, said.
Coalition spokesman Ryan Dillon hailed the latest advance on Twitter, saying Iraqi forces were continuing “to crush Daesh in Hawija” and that Iraqi President Haidar Al Abadi’s pledge to “liberate all Iraqi territory and to cleanse it from terrorists” was “close”. Last year, government forces bypassed the area in their advance north to Mosul, which culminated in the militants’ defeat in their most emblematic bastion.
Daesh has been forced out of most of the territory it seized in Iraq and Syria during a lightning offensive in the summer of 2014 that was followed by its declaration of a so-called “caliphate”.
Last week, it was ousted from Anna, one of three towns it still held in the Euphrates Valley, and Iraqi forces are preparing to advance upstream towards the other two, Rawa and Al Qaim.
Provincial civil defence chief General Fawzi Yassin said it had taken until yesterday to clear nearly 1,000 mines and booby-traps that the militants had planted in and around Anna.
Town council chief Abdul Karim Al Ani told AFP: “This clearance operation is going to allow the displaced to return to their homes.” The US-led coalition is also backing an ArabKurdish alliance, the Syrian Democratic Forces, that is battling to oust Daesh from its de facto Syrian capital Raqqa. The SDF has captured about 90 per cent of Raqqa and is fighting fierce battles with remaining Daesh militants.
Daesh’s other main stronghold in Syria is the eastern province of Deir Al Zor, which borders Daesh-held territory in Iraq. Two separate offensives are under way against the militants in Deir Al Zor — one by the SDF, the other by government forces supported by Russia.