Iraq, Syria eye last IS dens
♦ Iraq PM wins Khamenei's support as war on IS, Kurd dispute hot up
♦ Baghdad demands Kurds cancel secession bid as price for talks
Iraqi forces launched an attack to drive Islamic State from the last territory it holds in Iraq yesterday and the Syrian army and its allies said they planned to march on the jihadist's last Syrian stronghold.
The separate assaults across the Iraqi-Syrian frontier aim to deal a final blow to the Islamic State "caliphate" that has crumbled this year in Syria and Iraq, with the group losing the cities of Mosul, Raqqa and swathes of other territory.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Islamic State fighters would have "to choose between death and surrender" as he announced the offensive on the region of Rawa and al-Qaim, which is located at the Syrian border.
The Iraqi air force dropped thousands of leaflets on the border area calling on militants to surrender and urging the population to stay away from their positions, according to a statement from the Joint Operations Command in Baghdad.
In a statement welcoming the offensive, the US-led coalition said approximately 1,500 Islamic State fighters were estimated to be still in the immediate vicinity of al-Qaim.
In Syria, Islamic State has been driven back into a strip of territory along the Euphrates River by separate offensives waged by the Syrian government and its allies on the one hand, and by Syrian militias backed by the US-led coalition on the other.
Albu Kamal is located at the Iraqi border in the Syrian province of Deir al-Zor, just over the frontier from al-Qaim.
The Iraqi PM, whose forces battled jihadists in the west of the country and Kurds in the north, won the support of Iranian leaders at talks in Tehran.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei "gave his support for measures taken by the Iraqi government to defend the unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq", Khamenei's office said in a statement after their meeting.
He also yesterday demanded that Kurds declare their independence referendum void, rejecting the Kurdish autonomous region's offer to suspend its independence push to resolve a crisis through talks.
"We won't accept anything but its cancellation and the respect of the Constitution," Haider al-Abadi said in a statement during his visit to Tehran.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) proposed on Wednesday an immediate ceasefire, a suspension of the referendum result and "starting an open dialogue with the federal government based on the Iraqi Constitution".
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