The ISIL Takfiri terrorists have executed four people for allegedly recruiting fighters for pro-government forces in Iraq’s northern province of Salahuddin.
On Tuesday, the ISIL terrorists posted pictures of decapitations of the four men. The grisly images show four men dressed in black, kneeling in an empty street with knife-wielding militants standing behind them. The pictures also show the men after the beheading.
The exact location where the photos were taken remains unclear, but the text accompanying the photographs says the vicious acts took place in Salahuddin Province.
Iraqi forces have temporarily put on hold a major military operation to take back the provincial capital of Tikrit from ISIL. The army says the Salahuddin offensive is paused to allow civilians to leave the strategic northern city.
Iraq’s Interior Minister Mohammed Salem al-Ghabban says the operation has so far managed to achieve 90 percent of its objectives, and the terrorists have been forced to gather in a pocket of the city center.
ISIL has booby-trapped buildings and roads leading to Tikrit, so the Iraqi forces, backed by volunteer fighters, have slowed down the push to reduce their own causalities, protect the infrastructure and let residents leave, Ghabban said.
Iraq’s army and volunteer forces launched the long-awaited offensive against ISIL in Salahuddin on March 1. The province has been a stronghold of the terrorists north of the capital, Baghdad.
Tikrit, the birthplace of former Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, was seized by ISIL in June last year.
The city’s recapture is crucial for the Iraqi army in its quest to take control of the country’s second-largest city, Mosul, situated some 400 kilometers (248 miles) north of Baghdad.
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