IS loses last of bastions
Iraqi forces retook one of the Islamic State group's last two enclaves in the country yesterday, overrunning the longtime insurgent bastion of Hawija after a two-week offensive.
IS once held one-third of Iraqi territory but it has suffered loss after loss this year and now only controls a slither of land in the Euphrates Valley near the Syrian border.
"I announce the liberation of the city of Hawija," Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi told a news conference in Paris. "All that remains is the strip on the border with Syria."
Iraqi forces celebrated after entering the town, posing with upside down IS flags and flashing V-for-victory signs after riding in on tanks and armoured personnel carriers, an AFP photographer reported.
"Today we are in Hawija and thank God it is completely liberated," said Zamer Jabbar, a member of the Shiite-dominated Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary units fighting against IS alongside government forces.
Hawijah, 230 kilometres (140 miles) north of Baghdad, was at the centre of a pocket of mainly Sunni Arab towns that were among the final holdouts from territory seized by the jihadists in 2014.
The town had been an insurgent bastion since soon after the US-led invasion of 2003, earning it the nickname of "Kandahar in Iraq" for the ferocious resistance it put up similar to that in the Taliban militia's citadel in Afghanistan.
The area's mainly Sunni Arab population is deeply hostile both to the Shia-led government in Baghdad and to the Kurds who form the historic majority in adjacent areas.
Government forces bypassed it in their advance north to second city Mosul last year, which culminated in the jihadists' defeat in the emblematic bastion in July.
Hawija lies between the two main routes north from Baghdad -- to Mosul and to the city of Kirkuk and the autonomous Kurdish region -- and its recapture is both a symbolic and a strategic victory for the government.
The US-led coalition is also backing an Arab-Kurdish alliance, the Syrian Democratic Forces, that is battling to oust IS from its de facto Syrian capital Raqa.
The SDF has captured about 90 percent of Raqa and is fighting fierce battles with remaining IS jihadists.
IS's other main stronghold in Syria is the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, which borders IS-held territory in Iraq.
Two separate offensives are under way against the jihadists in Deir Ezzor -- one by the SDF, the other by government forces supported by Russia.
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