Iraqi government forces broke through Islamic State’s lines inside Tal Afar yesterday, and reached the old city centre and the neighbourhood around the Ottoman-era citadel, according to a military statement.
On the sixth day of the offensive, Iraqi elite units seized the northern city’s neighbourhoods of Nida’ and Taliaa, according to a statement from the Iraqi Joint Operations Command.
“The Iraqi flag has been hoisted in Al-Nasr district,” an eastern neighbourhood of the city, the Joint Operations Centre said in a statement.
It said Counter-Terrorism Service special forces had also retaken Al-Taliaa district to the south and were tasked with expelling IS from the citadel, the last current target of the CTS in Tal Afar.
On the sixth day of an offensive to recapture the city launched between the CTS, Shia fighters of the Hashed al-Shaabi and the federal police force, police have seized the Saad district and were moving into Al Qadissiyah, the JOC said.
After routing the jihadists from Iraq’s second city Mosul in July following a gruelling nine-month-long battle, Iraqi forces launched an assault Sunday on Tal Afar, where an estimated 1,000 jihadists are holed up.
The attackers have faced an onslaught of suicide and car bomb assaults.
The International Organisation for Migration said “thousands of civilians” had fled Tal Afar since the offensive began.
But around 30,000 civilians are trapped by the fighting, according to the United Nations.