War against Islamic State is over, says Iraqi commander
Iraqi forces are seen flashing the sign for victory on November 4, 2017 in the centre of the city of..
Iraq’s war against Islamic State is over, a senior military commander has said.
The country is now ‘totally liberated’ from Islamic State, the Iraqi armed forces announced in a statement on Saturday.
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In an announcement Saturday, Lt. Gen. Abdul-Amir Rasheed Yar Allah says combat operations against the extremists have concluded after Iraqi forces retook control of the country’s border with Syria.
The statement says ‘all Iraqi lands are liberated from terrorist Daesh gangs and our forces completely control the international Iraqi-Syrian borders’.
Daesh is an Arabic acronym for IS.
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IS fighters overran nearly a third of Iraqi territory, including Mosul, the country’s second largest city, in the summer of 2014.
Over the past three and a half years, Iraqi ground forces closely backed by the U.S.-led coalition have retaken all the territory once held by extremists, but the group remains capable of carrying out insurgent attacks.
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In November, Iraqi forces retook the last town held by IS – Rawah, near the border with Syria.
Over the following weeks Iraqi forces continued to clear patches of the country’s vast western deserts.
In the most significant victory over the extremists, Iraqi forces retook Mosul earlier this year. Al-Abadi declared the fight concluded in July, but clashes continued in the city for weeks afterward.
Iraq now faces the daunting challenge of reconstruction. The fighting caused massive devastation in many areas, and some 3 million Iraqis are still displaced.
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