Ahlul Bayt News Agency - Iraqi Army alongside Popular Mobilization Forces reported taking control of two villages in western Samarra on Sunday, they launched operations to liberate areas of Salahaddin province.
The forces issued a statement saying the so-called Islamic State (IS) militants fled from the villages of Haji Hussein and Ibrahim Ata as they launched operations to liberate the villages.
Forces also reported discovering an IS weapons and ammunitions cache in western Samarra, located 125 km north of Baghdad.
Iraq’s Ministry of Defense said on August 18 that infantry troops and local police, supported by air units, launched an assault to liberate the Jazeera area, west of Samarra.
“Operations are ongoing with support from the heroes of the Army Aviation and the Air Force,” the defense ministry statement said. “Now the enemy has started to retreat and flee most of its locations, which were targeted and destroyed with precision bombings by the heroes of the army aviation.”
Iraqi security forces and Shia fighters managed to wrest control of strategic parts of Salahaddin province from IS in the spring before turning their focus westward towards the country’s expansive Anbar province.
Anbar’s provincial capital, Ramadi, was overrun by militants in May, marking the biggest defeat for Iraqi forces since the fall of Mosul in June 2014.
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