ISIS militants take key military base in Iraq’s Anbar province





Written by : Mohamed Abdel Fattah

Oct 13, 2014

Islamist insurgents on Monday seized control of a key military training camp in Anbar province ,The base outside the city of Hit was one of the Shiite-led government’s few remaining military outposts in Anbar.

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) fighters had assaulted and eventually seized the center of the western city on the Euphrates river, but a sizeable contingent of government forces remained holed up in a nearby base.

The Iraqi military still controls the Ayn al-Asad military base, which helps defend Iraq’s second-largest dam and the provincial capital of Ramadi.

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A security source in Iraq described the loss of Hit as a “tactical withdrawal” by the Iraqi army unit that controlled the base and protected the town. It is the latest military base to fall in Anbar.

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Hit lies well away from the strategic international highway linking Baghdad to the Jordanian border. But Isis’s control of the town would put it in a position to attack Ramadi from two sides.

Despite airstrikes by the U.S. and its allies over the weekend, reports suggest ISIS has continued to gain ground and has encircled Haditha, the last large town in Anbar not yet in the militant group’s hands.

The fighters have massacred hundreds of captured Iraqi and Syrian soldiers, terrorized religious minorities, and beheaded two American journalists and two British aid workers. Hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled into Turkey from Syria ahead of the militants.

The attacks, which came as Iraqi Shiites marked a major holiday for their sect with families crowding the streets in celebration, raised new concerns that the Sunni militant group is making gains .

Government forces have suffered a string of setbacks in Anbar in recent weeks, Iraqi officials say Isis now controls 80 per cent of Anbar province, which is mostly uninhabitable desert and officials have warned that their grip on the capital Ramadi was increasingly tenuous.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Monday that as many as 180,000 people have been displaced in Anbar because of the fighting in recent days around Hit and Ramadi, the provincial capital.

U.N. estimates "suggest that 75 percent of people from Hit, out of an original population of 300,000, have now fled the town," according to Farhan Haq in New York.

Meanwhile in Syria, fighting continues in the key Kurdish border city of Kobani, which ISIS has been trying to seize for weeks.

Monday has been one most violent days since ISIS launched its assault, with sounds of fierce fighting, including gunfire and explosions, CNN staff on the Syria-Turkey border said.

Sources
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/isis-captures-iraq-army-camp-as-bombs-hit-baghdad/
http://fox6now.com/2014/10/13/iraq-military-abandons-key-anbar-base-to-isis-militants/
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/10/13/Iraq-pulls-troops-from-ISIS-held-Heet.html

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