60 Daesh terrorists killed in clashes with Iraqi forces

Sixty Takfiri Daesh terrorists have been killed during clashes with Iraqi forces in two Iraqi provinces.

According to Abdulamir Rashid Yarallah, the commander of the liberation operation for the city of Mosul, Iraqi airstrikes killed 42 Daesh terrorists, who were waiting in ambush in the villages of Kheybarat and A’alabyeh as well as in the al-Mahlabyeh district in western Mosul, in Iraqi Nineveh Province.

Fierce clashes between Iraqi forces and Daesh terrorists in the eastern areas of Salahuddin Province also killed 18 Takfiris and injured 21 others.

Meanwhile, a US-led coalition airstrike against a Daesh camp in the town of Qa’em in western Anbar Province reportedly killed 16 terrorists and destroyed the camp.

Life is gradually returning to normal in the liberated parts of the strategic city of Mosul. Overrun by Daesh in June 2014, the city has been the target of Iraqi military operations since late last year to dislodge the terrorists.

After retaking the al-Milayeen and al-Binaa al-Jahiz areas, the Iraqi army announced in a statement on Sunday that all districts of eastern Mosul had been cleared of Daesh militants.

Meanwhile, almost 5,200 people have returned to their homes in the eastern parts of Mosul over the past two days, an Iraqi relief worker said Friday.

“Some 5,200 people have departed the Al-Khazir and Hassan Sham camps [east of Mosul] and returned to the city’s liberated eastern neighborhoods,” International Red Crescent (IRC) official Iyad Rafid told Anadolu.

Relief workers have stepped up humanitarian efforts inside Mosul’s liberated east.

Zaki Yakoub, the director of the IRC’s branch in Nineveh Province, said, “IRC teams have distributed more than 800 food packages among residents of Mosul’s eastern al-Mithaq district.”

According to Iraq’s minister of displacement and migration, Jassim al-Jaff, between 200,000 and 250,000 people are expected to flee western Mosul as clashes intensify between the Iraqi forces and Daesh. The United Nations estimates that some 750,000 civilians are trapped in the area.

Iraqi army soldiers and allied fighters are gearing up for a phase of operations against Daesh in western Mosul.

In another development, the explosion of an improvised explosive device 40 kilometers north of Salahuddin Province on Saturday killed three Iraqi civilians and injured six others, according to an Iraqi security source.

Moreover, Daesh mortar attacks against residential areas in western Mosul claimed the lives of seven civilians and wounded 21 others, including security forces.