‘Iraq Combing Anbar for Remaining Daesh Terrorists’

The Iraqi army is reportedly combing through the expansive western Anbar Province for possible pockets of the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group, which the country defeated territorially last December.

Kurdish Rudaw television network reported on Saturday that the Iraqi army was carrying out an inclusive operation covering Anbar’s desert areas right up to the province’s border with Saudi Arabia to hunt down any remaining Daesh terrorists.

 It cited Mahmood Falahi, the commander of Anbar Operations Command, as saying that the operation had started earlier in the day.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared victory over the group on December 9, 2017 after the army and its allies retook the last urban areas in western Iraq from the Takfiri militants. Ever since, the army has been rooting out small Daesh cells in Anbar and in the vicinity of the north-central Iraqi Saladin Province.

Meanwhile, Iraq’s Joint Operations Command said that the forces were conducting an operation based on “accurate intelligence about the presence of a terrorist leader, KarimAfat Ali al-Samirmd, in one of houses in [Anbar’s] al-Baghdadi District to meet with a terrorist cell.”

Daesh began a terror campaign in Iraq in 2014, overrunning vast swathes in lightning attacks. A United States-led coalition started a campaign of aerial bombing against purported Daesh targets the same year. As the coalition made little progress, the Iraqi army and its allied forces retook territory during fighting on the ground.

Dozens of Izadi bodies found in mass grave in Iraq’s Nineveh

On the other hand, Iraqi security forces have found a mass grave in the northern province of Nineveh, which contains the bodies of dozens of Izadis believed to have been executed by DaeshTakfiri terrorists when they were in control of an area there.

A security source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Arabic-language al-Etejah television network on Saturday that federal police forces had made the discovery in the town of Qahtaniyah, located about 100 kilometers from Mosul, and that the mass grave contained the bodies of 70 people.

He added that security forces had handed over all the bodies to the forensic department in Mosul to be identified and returned to their relatives.

Iraqi legislator Haji Kendor told Arabic-language al-Ghad Press news agency on December 29, 2017 that search teams had found a mass grave that contained the bodies of 80 elderly and disabled women near the town of Sinjar, situated over 400 kilometers northwest of the capital Baghdad.

Kendor added that some of the victims had been buried alive, noting that Daesh terrorists had buried the women from the Izadi minority group in a fish farm, and the grisly discovery was made by local search teams.

Back in August 2014, Daesh terrorists overran the town of Sinjar, killing, raping, and enslaving large numbers of Izadi Kurds.

The region was recaptured in November 2015, during an operation by Kurdish Peshmerga forces and Izadi fighters.

The Office of Kidnapped Affairs in the northern Iraqi city of Dohuk said last year that around 3,500 Izadi Kurds were still being held captive by Daesh, adding that a large proportion of the abductees were women and children.

The Endowments and Religious Affairs Ministry of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government announced last August that Daesh’s genocide against Izadis had forced nearly 360,000 members of the minority to flee their hometowns, and another 90,000 to leave Iraq and take refuge in others countries.

PRESS T.V

R.S