Iraq forces advance into ‘last den’ of ISIS

HABBANIYAH, Iraq (UPDATED) – Iraqi forces on Thursday, October 26, recaptured from the Islamic State group (ISIS) several military bases and villages as they launched a push to wipe out remnants of the jihadists’ self-styled caliphate in the country.

The start of the keenly awaited offensive that the US-led coalition fighting ISIS has dubbed “the last big fight” of the campaign came even as Iraqi troops launched a new operation against the Kurds.

There had been fears 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 battle against ISIS.

On Thursday the UN Security Council urged leaders from Iraq and the Kurdish autonomous region to set a timetable for talks to end the crisis. 

Iraqi forces pressed ahead with a threatened drive up the Euphrates valley towards the Syrian border in a bid to retake two Sunni Arab towns renowned as hotbeds of insurgency ever since the US-led invasion of 2003.

“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 neighbouring 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 ISIS have no choice but to die or surrender.”

Regional operations commander General Qassem al-Mohammedi told AFP the forces were advancing on 4 fronts – from the east, southeast, north and south.

Units of the federal police and the elite Counter-Terrorism Service as well as the paramilitary Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) force were supporting the army, he said.

They retook military bases southeast of Al-Qaim, including the key army base of the region and an airbase which the fleeing jihadists had abandoned, as well as half a dozen villages in the area, military sources said.

Insurgency bastion

Iraqi forces have recaptured more than 90 percent of the territory IS seized in the country in 2014, pushing the jihadists in a small stretch of the Euphrates valley.

Crucially for an offensive in an overwhelmingly Sunni Arab region, Sunni tribal volunteers in the Hashed battled alongside the Iran-trained Shiite militias that are its mainstay, and two of them were killed on Thursday, military sources said.

The US-led coalition said it had carried out some 15 strikes on ISIS targets in and around Al-Qaim and the town of Albu Kamal on the Syrian side of the border.

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

US troops carried out repeated operations with names like Matador and Steel Curtain in 2005 to flush out Al-Qaeda jihadists.

Coalition commanders are convinced Al-Qaim will be ISIS’ last stand.

On the Syrian side of the border, Russian-backed government forces have been pushing down the Euphrates valley while US-backed Kurdish and Arab fighters have been attacking the jihadists from their stronghold in the north.

The launch of the offensive against ISIS’s last Iraqi redoubt comes with federal troops and militia engaged in an operation to reassert central government control over thousands of square kilometres (miles) of territory long disputed with the Kurds.

Loss of the territory has dealt a crippling blow to the finances of the autonomous Kurdish region, and on Wednesday its leaders said they were ready to freeze the outcome of the September 25 independence referendum.

But Abadi dismissed the offer, saying it did not go far enough.

“We will accept nothing but the annulment of the referendum and respect for the constitution,” he said.

Oil pipeline in sights

Abadi, whose stock has been massively boosted by the military successes, received a fresh show of support for his fight against ISIS and the Kurds from his allies in Iran during a visit to Tehran.

The backing came as Iraqi forces launched a new assault on Kurdish fighters in the disputed oil-rich Zummar area of Nineveh province, Kurdish authorities said.

An Agence France-Presse correspondent reported heavy artillery exchanges as Kurdish forces put up fierce resistance.

Sources on the Kurdish side said the peshmerga fighters had destroyed three tanks and six armoured vehicles belonging to the Iraqi forces.

Thursday’s assault was close to the route of a strategic oil export pipeline linking the Kirkuk fields retaken from the Kurds with the Turkish port of Ceyhan that fell into disuse during IS’s lightning sweep through northern and western Iraq in 2014.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Abadi he was “ready to provide any kind of support to allow the operation of the pipeline”.

The course of the defunct pipeline passes through the town of Faysh Khabur, near where the borders of Iraq, Turkey and Syria meet, in territory which lies undisputedly inside the autonomous Kurdish region.

Meanwhile the US-led coalition said on Thursday that its air and artillery strikes in Iraq and Syria over the past three years have killed  “unintentionally” at least 786 civilians. – Rappler.com