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Iraqi forces say they have broken through Islamic State lines in Tal Afar
[REUTERS] Iraqi government forces broke through Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
’s lines inside Tal Afar on Friday, reaching the old city center and the neighborhood around the Ottoman-era citadel, according to a military statement.

On the sixth day of the offensive, elite Iraqi units seized the northern neighborhoods of Nida’, Taliaa, Uruba, Nasr, and Saad, according to a statement from the Iraqi Joint Operations Command (JOC).

The Iraqi forces have seized about three quarters of the city since the offensive started in the early hours of Aug. 20, according to the latest JOC map, published on Friday evening. The bandidos bandidos krazed killers remain in control of the northeast quarter.

Tal Afar lies on the supply route between Syria and the former Islamic State stronghold of djinn-infested Mosul
... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
, 80 km (50 miles) to the east. It has produced some of the bad boy group’s most senior commanders.

Tal Afar, which had a pre-war population of about 200,000, is the latest objective in the U.S.-backed war on Islamic State, following the recapture of Mosul after a nine-month campaign that left much of the city, the biggest in northern Iraq, in ruins.
Posted by: Fred 2017-08-26
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=495827