IS fighters hold 50,000 hostage in besieged city

IRAQI forces are poised for a final assault on a key city held by Islamic State. Some 1,700 IS fighters are defending Fallujah, west of Baghdad, where the jihadists are holding 50,000 civilians as human shields.

Its exiled mayor, Issa Al-Issawi, said the extremists had turned the city into one of the world’s largest prisons.

Yesterday Iraq’s special forces moved into the outskirts of Fallujah – one of the last major cities in the country under IS control – marking a milestone in the offensive launched a week ago.

The Iraqi army said troops had recaptured 80 per cent of the surrounding territory.

IS militants meanwhile attacked the town of Hit, 85 miles west of Baghdad. The counter-offensive comes a month after Hit was recaptured by government troops.

Fallujah was the first city in Iraq to fall to IS, which seized control in January 2014, six months before sweeping across northern and western Iraq and declaring a caliphate.

Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region also announced yesterday the launch of a predawn offensive involving 5,500 Peshmerga fighters to retake an area on the road between its capital Erbil and Mosul.