Iraqi troops recapture Khalidiya city from ISIS

Middle East, News May 22, 2015 , by IRIA No Comments

Iraqi army forces have managed to bring under their control the city of Khalidiya in the western province of Anbar.

According to reports on Friday, the Iraqi army liberated Khalidiya after flushing ISIS militants out of the city.

Earlier on Friday, an Iraqi official announced that army forces, backed by volunteers, are set to launch an operation in the near future to retake the central city of Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar, from the ISIS terrorists.

“The operation will not begin in the next few hours, but in the coming days,” Ahmed al-Assadi, a spokesman for the Popular Mobilization forces, who also serves as a lawmaker, told AFP.

“It will be a wide operation involving tens of thousands of security forces and Hashed al-Shaabi,” Assadi said, using the Arabic name for the Popular Mobilization forces.

He noted that the upcoming offensive is primarily aimed at stopping any further advance by the terrorists.

The liberation of Khalidiya came a day after Iraqi troops, backed by volunteer forces, broke the siege on the embattled Baiji refinery in the northern province of Salahuddin, liberating some 300 soldiers in the process.

Qais al-Khazali, head of the Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq volunteer forces, said the group and the security forces in Salahuddin successfully carried out the security operation to break the siege on Baiji refinery.

A spokesman for the Iraqi military also confirmed the full retaking of the refinery, which lies some 40 kilometers north of the Iraqi city of Tikrit in Salahuddin.

The new gains show the resolve of the Iraqi forces in their battle against the terrorist group.

The northern and western parts of Iraq have been in chaos since ISIS started its campaign of terror in early June 2014. Since then, Iraq’s army has been joined by Kurdish forces, and Shia and Sunni volunteers in operations to flush ISIS terrorists out of the areas they have seized.