As Iraqi forces hunt down diehard jihadists, Al-Qaim residents recall three years of hell in “open-air prison”. “We’re no longer afraid of going to prison or anything else.”Iraqi forces took Al-Qaim, one of the last refuges in Iraq of the Islamic State group, on Friday. The jihadist group entered the important desert town a few kilometers from the border with Syria in 2014, and quickly made its presence felt. Other streets are still partly blocked by earthen barricades put up by fighters of the “caliphate” and now crushed by bulldozers of the Iraqi forces. Since the jihadist group captured nearly a third of Iraq’s territory in 2014, Iraqi forces have taken almost all of it back.

Source: The Standard November 08, 2017 10:52 UTC