The Iraqi army retook the last town in the country still held by the Islamic State group on Friday as the jihadists’ self-proclaimed “caliphate” faced collapse on both sides of the border with Syria. Rawa was bypassed in an offensive by the Iraqi army that resulted in the recapture of the strategically important border town of Al-Qaim earlier this month. US-led troops carried out repeated operations with code names like Matador and Steel Curtain in 2005 to flush out Al-Qaeda jihadists. The region swiftly fell to IS when its fighters swept through the Sunni Arab heartland north and west of Baghdad in 2014 before proclaiming its “caliphate”. Over the border in Syria, IS still holds around 25 percent of the countryside of Deir Ezzor province but are under attack not only by government forces but also by US-backed Kurdish-led fighters.

Source: Egypt Independent November 17, 2017 10:07 UTC