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Shi'ite fighters move towards crucial Iraqi city

Monday, November 21, 2016 - 00:46

Shi'ite paramilitaries are advancing towards the Iraqi city of Tal Afar to cut off Islamic State militants supply routes.

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NATURAL ROUGH CUT - NO REPORTER NARRATION Iraqi Shi'ite paramilitary groups are close to cutting the main supply route to Mosul, Islamic State's last major stronghold in Iraq, closing in on the highway that links the Syrian and Iraqi parts of the militants' self-declared caliphate. Six weeks into the U.S.-backed offensive on Mosul, Islamic State is fighting back in the region of Tal Afar, 60 kilometres (37 miles) to the west, against a coalition of Iranian-backed militias known as Hashid Shaabi, or Popular Mobilisation. Iranian-backed militias have already captured the Tal Afar airbase, west of Mosul, part of their campaign to choke off the route between the Syrian and Iraqi parts of the caliphate Islamic State declared in 2014. The base is located just south of Tal Afar, a mostly ethnic Turkmen town that Turkey would not want to fall under the control of the mostly pro-Iranian militia coalition. Hashid Shaabi plan to besiege the town for now, a spokesman of Kata'ib Hezbollah, one of the main paramilitary groups making up the coalition, told Reuters on Friday (November 18). Iraqi military estimates put the number of Islamic State fighters in Mosul at 5,000 to 6,000. Facing them is a 100,000-strong coalition of Iraqi government forces, Kurdish fighters and Shi'ite paramilitary units. Cutting the western road to Tal Afar would seal off Mosul as the city is already surrounded from the north, the south and the east by Iraqi government and Kurdish Peshmerga forces.

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Shi'ite fighters move towards crucial Iraqi city

Monday, November 21, 2016 - 00:46