Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi (AP Photo/Office of the Iraqi Prime Minister)
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has announced a full liberation of the Tal Afar area in northern Iraq as well as the Iraqi province of Nineveh from ISIS terorirsts, Sky News Arabia reported on Thursday.
رئيس الوزراء العراقي يعلن استعادة #تلعفر ومحافظة #نينوى من داعش
— سكاي نيوز عربية-الآن (@SkyNewsArabia_B) 31 August 2017
On Wednesday, the Iraqi Army and the Popular Mobilization Units liberated -Ayadia town north of the recently liberated city of Tal Afar and further advanced in the rest of the area controlled by ISIS: the villages of al-Salehiyah and Qubq as well as the Kasik military base.
Following this success, reports appeared that the Iraqi military was preparing to declare the victory in the battle for Tal Afar and to start planning an operation to liberate Hawija southwest of Kirkuk.
However, al-Abadi’s statement still has to be confirmed by photos or videos from the ground.
Meanwhile, reports appeared that over 90 ISIS members were killed as a result of the Iraqi Air Force’s airstrikes on the terrorst group’s positions in the area of Qaim in the province of Anbar.
ISIS controls the towns of Qaim, Rawa and Anna in western Anbar. These areas will likely become a target of government forces operations after the liberation of Tal Afar.
The next ops should be Anbar but if Abadi caves in , it wont be . Al Qaim ops will ease the pressure and allow SAA to capture Bukamal
They need to secure their border first anything else is a waste of time and they never needed 40,000 troops to clear out 620 , Syria and Hezbollah had a fraction of that and cleared the pocket faster. The US is the king of the clusterfucks and has the Iraqi army amassing in large formations a good chance of friendly fire incidents and bad communications can occur. This might be the US intention though to stir up tensions with a friendly fire incident.
The pressure they could exert on these pockets with them clearing the border would be tremendous and strong in morale boosting for the Iraqi people and army. This is possibly why the US sees this as a problem and is preventing any attempt in that direction. They are trying to make the referendum assured for the Kurds saying Iraq can’t protect it’s borders is a great P.R. scam and assures the separation and division of Iraq.
All my congratulations for this briliant, super fast victory, PMU and Iraqi army!