4 ISIS Bad Guys eat Iraqi steel
Anbar (IraqiNews.com) Airstrikes by U.S.-led coalition fighter jets killed on Tuesday four Islamic State militants at a drones mini-factory run by the group in western Anbar, a security source has said.
The source told Aljournal news that intelligence information revealed that the strike destroyed the factory located near the Grand Mosque at the center of the IS-held town of Annah. The four militants killed in the strike included a Tajik drone expert, according to the source.
Militants barred civilians from going out of their homes so as not to expose the extent of the damage the factory had sustained in the offensive, the source stated.
“IS have manufactured tens of reconnaissance and bomb-supplied drones to target security forces,” according to the source.
Islamic State has been holding a number of towns in western Anbar, close to the borders with Syria, since it emerged in 2014 to proclaim an “Islamic Caliphate” on Iraqi territory. Army and U.S.-led fighter aircraft have occasionally pounded the group’s locations at those regions.
No official security campaign has been declared by the government yet to recapture western Anbar towns as its forces have been busy since mid October struggling to retake Mosul, Islamic State’s biggest stronghold in the country. Anbar’s military command launched a brief offensive early January, which succeeded in recapturing a few villages before halting again.
15 die in Iraqi airstrikes in al-Qaim
Anbar (IraqiNews.com) Airstrikes by unidentified fighter jets left 15 civilian casualties at western Anbar on Tuesday, a local source has said.
A woman and a child were killed and 13 other civilians were wounded in an airstrike by unknown military aircraft at a residential area at the city of al-Qaem, Islamic State’s biggest pocket in the province, Sputnik News agency quoted a local source as saying.
This is not the first time botched airstrikes leave civilian casualties since Iraqi government troops and allied U.S.-led air forces launched a campaign to drive IS militants out of Iraq.
A similar airstrike at Qaem’s al-Karabla region on January 6th left five civilians dead and 16 others injured.
In December, fighter jets, believed to be Iraqi, killed at least 130 civilians by mistake, also in Qaem. The incident sparked wide-scale condemnation in Iraq, and generals at the Iraqi military and the US-led coalition fighting ISIS in Iraq denied responsibility for the airstrike.
An airstrike targeting a medical unit supposedly occupied by Islamic State militants in the Mosul district of Hammam al-Alil last October killed eight civilians, according to Human Rights Watch, which urged air forces engaged in battles against the group to ensure civilians’ safety.