Alwaght- At least 25 were killed on Friday when a house rigged with explosives blew up in Iraq’s already-ISIS held city of Rawa in embattled province of Anbar province
The explosion went off as government troops, backed by allied fighters from Popular Mobilization Forces, are engaged in a large-scale military operation to dislodge the remnants of ISIS terrorist group from their hideouts in the desert in northern Iraq.
The Deputy Governor of Rawa, Hussain Ali, told Arabic-language Baghdad Today news agency on Friday that 25 people were killed by a “house-borne improvised explosive device” in the recently-liberated Rawa town.
He added that local authorities have called upon the central government in Baghdad as well as provincial officials to dispatch bomb disposal units to the units as the number of explosive devices left by ISIS Takfiris is very high.
Ali further noted that internally displaced families cannot be repatriated to Rawa since many districts are still infested with hidden bombs and military ordnance.
On November 17, army troops and pro-government fighters from Popular Mobilization Forces – also known by the Arabic name Hashd al-Sha’abi – had completely retaken Rawa, located about 300 kilometers northwest of the capital Baghdad, and hoisted the national Iraqi flag over a number of buildings there.
The commander of Upper Euphrates and al-Jazira Liberation Operations, Major General Abdul Amir Yarallah, announced on November 23 the launch of the second phase of the offensive aimed at clearing the vast desert near the border with Syria, which extends to the northern provinces of Nineveh and Salahuddin and the western province of Anbar.
The forces ended the first phase of the offensive on November 17, when they drove out the Daesh extremists from their last urban stronghold in Iraq and raised the Iraqi flag over buildings in the western town of Rawah and nearby border areas north of the Euphrates River.
