Battle for Tal Afar: Iraqi Forces Recapture City Center

Local Editor

Iraqi armed forces said they have managed to retake the center of Tal Afar from the Wahhabi Daesh [Arabic acronym for "ISIS" / "ISIL"] terrorists as their battle to liberate the northern city enters a final stage.

"Units of the Counter-Terrorism Service liberated the Citadel and Basatin districts and raised the Iraqi flag on top of the citadel," Commander of Tal Afar Liberation Operation Lieutenant General Abdul Amir Yarallah said in a statement.

The announcement came hours after Iraq's Foreign said security forces had liberated 70 percent of Tal Afar from the control of Daesh.

"God willing the remaining part will be liberated soon," Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said at a press conference with his French counterpart, Jean-Yves Le Drian, and French Defense Minister Florence Parly, in Baghdad.

Tal Afar is one of the last remaining Daesh strongholds in Iraq. The United Nations estimates that some 30,000 people remain trapped inside the city.

On August 20, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the commencement of a major offensive to retake the city of Tal Afar, near Mosul.

Mosul used to serve as Daesh's last urban base in Iraq before its liberation in July.

Daesh unleashed a campaign of death and destruction in Iraq in 2014, seizing Mosul and declaring it as its so-called "capital" in the Middle Eastern country.

Iraqi army soldiers and allied fighters had been leading a major operation to rid the country of the Wahhabi elements. The Iraqi forces fully liberated Mosul last month.

The fall of Mosul effectively marked the end of the self-proclaimed "caliphate" Daesh declared over parts of Syria and Iraq in 2014.

in a related notions, Iraqi military investigators said they have discovered two mass graves near a former Daesh prison outside Mosul that contains the bodies of 500 victims.

The Media Cell Security Investigation team said in a statement that one grave near the Badoush Prison site contained the bodies of 470 prisoners martyred by Daesh. It said a second grave contained 30 victims. A security official who spoke on condition of anonymity said based on records of prisoners who were at Badoush, most are believed to have been Shiites or other minorities. Authorities were continuing to look for more graves.

A massacre at Badoush in June 2014 left 600 male inmates dead. A patch of scraped earth and tire tracks show the likely killing site, according to exclusive photos obtained by the imagery intelligence firm AllSource Analysis.

Daesh has scattered mass graves across Iraq and Syria. The Associated Press last year documented and mapped 72 of them. For at least 16 of the Iraqi graves, officials do not even guess the number of dead. In others, the estimates are based on memories of traumatized survivors, Daesh propaganda and what can be gleaned from a cursory look at the earth. But even the known numbers of victims ranges from 5,200 to more than 15,000.

Also Friday, the spiritual leader of Iraq's Shiite majority called on doctors from across Iraq to help civilians fleeing clashes in the latest fight against Daesh in Iraq. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani said medical workers should travel to areas around the battle for Tal Afar to help "to treat the wounded, and treat them as a humanitarian, national and religious duty."

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team