...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
(ISIS
...embracing their inner Islamic Brute...) fighters and the arrests of four others during the first day of the "Will of Victory" operation’s fourth phase in Iraq’s western deserts.
The Iraqi Security Media Cell, a communications organization in the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, published the results of yesterday’s actions on Facebook today. Yesterday was the first day of the ongoing anti-ISIS operation’s fourth phase, and is being carried out in the Anbar province.
Iraqi army units destroyed 15 ISIS tunnels on all the four frontlines on the first day of the operation, and also defused eight bombs, according to the Security Media Cell.
US-led coalition warplanes conducted one
...
KABOOM!...
against an ISIS tunnel, which resulted in the deaths of two bad boys, also according to the Security Media Cell.
The Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), also known as Hashd al-Shaabi, killed two ISIS holy warriors and arrested four others in the Wadi al-Madsis valley frontline in the Anbar desert. One bad boy in the Iran-backed militia was also maimed during the festivities with the ISIS bad boys, according to the cell’s post.
Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, who is commander in chief of Iraq’s armed forces, arrived at the military’s Anbar Operation Command headquarters on Sunday to supervise and discuss the latest updates about the fourth phase of Will of Victory operation, his office said on Twitter.
The Iraqi Ministry of Defense announced the start of the fourth phase of its "Will of Victory" operation to hunt down the ISIS sleeper cells in the deserts of Anbar province on Saturday.
"The aim of the operation is to clean the desert of Anbar from Islamic State (ISIS) sleeper cells," the Iraqi Security Media Cell said in a statement on Saturday.
The operation is a collaboration between various domestic forces, including the Anbar Operations Command, al-Jazira Operation Command, Hashd al-Ashairi paramilitias, federal police, the army, the PMF, Border Guard Command and the air force, as well as the US-led international coalition, according to the statement.
Iraqi security forces aim to clear a nearly 43,000 kilometer area in the operation.
The Iraqi government announced the territorial defeat of ISIS in December 2017. However,
if you can't say something nice about a person some juicy gossip will go well...
remnants of the group have returned to earlier insurgency tactics of ambushing security forces, kidnapping, executing suspected informants, and extorting money from vulnerable, rural populations.
ISIS is particularly active near the Syrian border, in the Nineveh province, and in disputed territories between Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.
A report from the US Department of Defense released in August said there are 14,000 to 18,000 ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria.