Alwaght- The Iraqi government has liberated over 90 percent of the country’s territory from ISIS Takfiri terrorist group, government spokesman Saad al-Hadisi.
The Iraqi Army has been continuing its offensive despite limited possibilities in terms of weaponry as up to a third of it had been earlier seized by ISIS, al-Hadisi told RIA Novosti.
The government says more than 2.2 million of refugees have returned to the country’s areas retaken from ISIS terrorists.
The Iraqi forces assisted by Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in June fully recaptured the northern city of Mosul, the de facto capital of the ISIS terrorist group in the Arab country. The city was occupied by ISIS in June 2014 and ISIS ringleader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared his so-called caliphate at the city's iconic Grand al-Nuri Mosque. Following this strategic victory, early September Iraqi forces and PMF volunteers liberated, Tal Afar, another major bastion of ISIS in the country.
Tal Afar, occupied by ISIS in mid-2014, is located in the Nineveh governorate in the north of Iraq near the Syrian and Turkish borders 63 km west of Mosul and about 360 km north-west of the capital Baghdad. Tal Afar is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world with a history going back 6,000 years.
Iraqi government forces, backed by allied fighters from PMF, are now engaged in a major military operation aimed at liberating the town of Hawija in the oil-rich northern province of Kirkuk from ISIS Takfiri terrorists.
The offensive to retake Hawija is difficult due to the intense concentration of ISIS leaders and elements in the town plus the high number of civilians, whom the terrorists have held as human shields. Hawija is one of the last Iraqi towns still controlled by ISIS terrorists who occupied it after capturing Mosul and several other Iraqi cities in mid-2014.
