Alwaght- Iraqi forces have managed to kill 22 ISIS terrorists during a clean-up operation in the country's Nineveh province as army and allied fighters from Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) are involved in operations to clean the entire war-ravaged country of the extremists.
Commander of Nineveh Liberation Operations Major General Najim Abdullah al-Jubouri said on Monday that security forces staged an ambush and killed 22 ISIS members west of Mosul, located some 400 kilometers north of the capital Baghdad, after a tip-off that a group of militants had infiltrated into the area.
The development came only three days after Iraq’s Interior Ministry announced in a statement that six ISIS members, including a woman, had been arrested in the same Iraqi province.
The statement noted that the extremists were all on the Iraqi Interior Ministry’s list of wanted terrorists.
Two of them were captured in Abu Maria village near Tal Afar, located 63 kilometers west of Mosul, while the rest were nabbed in different parts of Mosul.
Last week, Iraqi security forces announced that more than 20 ISIS terrorists had been killed in several security operations west of Mosul.
On 9 December, 2017, Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared the end of military operations against the ISIS terrorist group in the Arab country.
“Our forces are in complete control of the Iraqi-Syrian border and I therefore announce the end of the war against ISIS,” Abadi told a conference in Baghdad then.
The Iraqi prime minister said on August 31 that Tal Afar and the entire Nineveh province had been purged of the ISIS Takfiri terrorist group.
The recapture of Tal Afar was made possible with the help of the Iraqi army, Federal Police, Counter-Terrorism Service units, pro-government fighters from the Popular Mobilization Forces and the Interior Ministry's elite rapid response forces, Abadi stated.
On July 10, Abadi formally declared victory over ISIS extremists in Mosul, which served as the terrorists’ main urban stronghold in the conflict-ridden Arab country.
In the run-up to Mosul's liberation, Iraqi army soldiers and PMF fighters had made sweeping gains against ISIS.
The Iraqi forces took control of eastern Mosul in January 2017 after 100 days of fighting, and launched the battle in the west on February 19 last year.
ISIS began a terror campaign in Iraq in 2014, overrunning vast swathes in lightning attacks.
