Iraqi forces yesterday launched an offensive to drive Islamic State fighters out of Tikrit, home town of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
In Geneva, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced a major aid operation to get supplies to more than half a million people displaced by fighting in northern Iraq.
Buoyed by an operation to recapture a strategic dam from the jihadists after two months of setbacks, Iraqi army units backed by Shiite militias fought their way toward the center of Tikrit, 130km north of Baghdad, which is a stronghold of the Sunni Muslim minority.
“Our forces are advancing from two directions with cover from army helicopters, mortar and artillery shelling the positions of the Islamic State fighters in and around the city,” an army major in the operations room said.
Sunni Muslim fighters led by the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, swept through much of northern and western Iraq in June, capturing the Sunni cities of Tikrit and Mosul as well as the Mosul dam, a fragile structure which controls water and power supplies to millions of people down the Tigris River valley.
However, on Monday fighters from Iraq’s Kurdish autonomous region said they had regained control of the dam with the help of US air strikes. US President Barack Obama also announced that the dam had been retaken.
The Iraqi major said fierce fighting was under way near Tikrit’s main hospital, 4km from the center of the city.
“Helicopters are pounding the bases of the terrorists to prevent them from regrouping,” he said.
As well as a push from the south, Iraqi forces were advancing slowly from the west due to land mines and roadside bombs planted by the militants, he added.
The Islamic State has concentrated on taking territory for its self-proclaimed caliphate both in Syria, where it is also fighting the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and across the border in Iraq.
UNHCR said a four-day airlift of tents and other goods would begin today to Erbil, capital of the Kurdish autonomous region, from the Jordanian port of Aqaba.
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