BAGHDAD
(Reuters) - Iraqi forces are about to launch an offensive to recapture the last
patch of Iraqi territory still in the hands of Islamic State, the military said
on
Wednesday.
“Your
security forces are now coming to liberate you,” said leaflets dropped by the
Iraqi air force on the western border region of al-Qaim and Rawa, according to
a statement from the Joint Operations Command in Baghdad.
The militant
group also holds parts of the Syrian side of the border, but the area under
their control is shrinking as they retreat in the face of two sets of hostile
forces - a U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led coalition and Syrian government troops with
foreign Shi‘ite militias backed by Iran and Russia.
Islamic
State’s self-declared cross-border caliphate effectively collapsed in July,
when U.S.-backed Iraqi forces captured Mosul, the group’s de facto capital in
Iraq, in a grueling battle which lasted nine months.
The
militants’ Syrian stronghold, Raqqa, fell to U.S.-backed forces last week.
Islamic
State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who declared the caliphate from Mosul in
mid-2014, released an audio recording on Sept. 28 that indicated he was alive,
after several reports he had been killed. He urged his followers to keep up the
fight despite setbacks.
“God is with
us in this last assault on Daesh members,” said the leaflets dropped by the
Iraqi forces on the border area with Syria, referring to Islamic State.
“Tell those
among your children and relatives who took up a weapon against the state to
throw it aside immediately, and to go to any house on top of which a white flag
have been raised when the liberation forces enter al-Qaim.”
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