Alwaght- Iraqi forces battled up on Tuesday to the edge of al-Qaim, the largest town still held by ISIS Takfiri terrorist group in the country, as they pushed a final assault on the Takfiri extremists.
Iraq's Joint Operations Command said government troops - backed by Popular Mobilization Forces, PMF, - captured the village of al-Obeidi, some 20 kilometers from the Syrian border on the eastern outskirts of the town.
"ISIS fighters resisted the advance of the troops, but the majority retreated to positions in the center of al-Qaim," it said in a statement.
Al-Qaim and the surrounding pocket of barren desert territory along the Euphrates river is now the last remnant in the country of the destroyed self-styled caliphate ISIS declared after rampaging across Iraq and Syria in 2014.
Iraq launched the offensive on the al-Qaim region - which also includes the smaller town of Rawa - on Thursday to finish off a punishing campaign that saw it force the ISIS terrorists out of their major urban stronghold Mosul in July.
Under ISIS, the town has been a vital supply route between its forces in Iraq and the oil-rich province of Deir ez-Zor it once dominated over the border in Syria.
While ISIS’ physical caliphate has crumbled, its deviant Saudi-backed Wahhabi ideology is still pervasive throughout ungoverned territories in West Asia, North Africa, West Africa and the Horn of Africa.
