SYRIA gets the lion’s share of the world’s attention, but in Iraq, after months of stalemate, the battle against Islamic State (IS) is at last hotting up. On October 7th the Iraqi army, local police and some tribal fighters, supported by both coalition and Iraqi air strikes, launched a big push to encircle and eventually retake Ramadi, the capital city of mainly Sunni Anbar province west of Baghdad which fell to IS in May. As The Economist went to press, the effort to cut Ramadi off appeared nearly complete, with the 10,000-strong Iraqi force in control of the critical Albu Farraj bridge over the Euphrates and preparing to take on the 1,000 or so IS fighters still left inside the city.
On October 15th around 5,000 Iraqi soldiers and armed national police working alongside 10,000 Iranian-supported Shia militia fighters (known as Hashid al-Shabi or Popular Mobilisation Units), with some help from coalition air strikes, began an assault to recapture the Baiji oil refinery. After months of inconclusive fighting, victory was declared on October 24th. The refinery, once the country’s biggest, is damaged beyond repair. But since it...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/1NaRvMf
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