SHARQAT, Sharqat, Iraq: Iraqi forces achieved the first goal of a new offensive against the Daesh group on just its second day Friday, penetrating the northern town of Sharqat, AFP correspondents said.
Some residents celebrated in the streets as government troops and paramilitaries entered the town center and tore down the black flags of the jihadists who had ruled it with an iron fist for more than three years.
AFP correspondents saw little major damage in the town, although there had been casualties in the fighting as they saw the bodies of two jihadists in the back of a pickup.
Sharqat was the first goal of a major offensive launched on Thursday to recapture an Daesh-held enclave centered on the insurgent bastion of Hawija, one of just two pockets still controlled by the jihadists in Iraq.
Sector operations chief General Abdel Amir Yarallah said some 20 villages around Sharqat had also been recaptured from Daesh.
The next goal is Hawija itself, some 30 kilometers (20 miles) to the southeast.
After the defeat of Daesh in second city Mosul in July and the recapture of adjacent areas, Hawija and neighboring towns form the last enclave still held by Daesh in Iraq apart from a section of the Euphrates Valley downstream from the border with Syria.
The mainly Sunni Arab enclave, which was bypassed by government forces in their advance north to Mosul last year, has been a bastion of insurgency ever since the first year of the US-led occupation in 2003.
The territory still held by Daesh in the “caliphate” straddling Iraq and Syria it proclaimed in 2014 has dwindled, with stronghold after stronghold coming under assault on both sides of the border.
Iraq soldiers, police and paramilitaries launched an offensive against the jihadists’s other remaining enclave earlier this week, pushing up the Euphrates Valley toward the Daesh-held towns of Anna, Rawa and Al-Qaim.
Iraq forces oust Daesh from northern town in drive on Hawija
Iraq forces oust Daesh from northern town in drive on Hawija
Kurds in Turkiye protest over Syria Aleppo offensive
- Several hundred people gathered in Diyarbakir while hundreds more joined a protest in Istanbul
- In the capital, Ankara, DEM lawmakers protested in front of the Turkish parliament
DIYARBAKIR, Turkiye: Protesters rallied for a second day in Turkiye’s main cities on Thursday to demand an end to a deadly Syrian army offensive against Kurdish fighters in Aleppo, an AFP correspondent said.
Several hundred people gathered in Diyarbakir, southeastern Turkiye’s main Kurdish-majority city, while hundreds more joined a protest in Istanbul that was roughly broken up by riot police who arrested around 25 people, the pro-Kurdish DEM party said.
In the capital, Ankara, DEM lawmakers protested in front of the Turkish parliament, denouncing the targeting of Kurds in Aleppo as a crime against humanity.
The protesters demanded an end to the operation by Syrian government forces against the Kurdish-led SDF force in Aleppo, where at least 21 people have been killed in three days of violent clashes.
It was the worst violence in the northwestern city since Syria’s Islamist authorities took power a year ago. The fighting erupted as both sides struggled to implement a March agreement to integrate autonomous Kurdish institutions into the new Syrian state.
In Istanbul, hundreds of protesters waving flags braved heavy rain near Galata Tower to denounce the Aleppo operation under the watchful eye of hundreds of riot police, an AFP correspondent said.
But some of the slogans drew a sharp warning from the police, who moved to roughly break up the gathering and arrested some 25 people, DEM’s Istanbul branch said.
“We condemn in the strongest terms the police attack on the Rojava solidarity action in Sishane. This brutal intervention, oppression, and violence against our young comrades is unacceptable!” the party wrote on X, demanding the immediate release of those arrested.
At the Diyarbakir protest during the afternoon, protesters carried a huge portrait of the jailed PKK militant leader Abdullah Ocalan, an AFP video journalist reported.
“We urge states to act as they did for the Palestinian people, for our Kurdish brothers who are suffering oppression and hardship,” Zeki Alacabey, 64, told AFP in Diyarbakir.
Although Turkiye has embarked on a peace process with the PKK, it remains hostile to the SDF, which controls swathes of northeastern Syria, seeing it as an extension of the banned militant group and a major threat along its southern border.
It has repeatedly demanded that the SDF merge into the main Syrian military. A defense ministry official said on Thursday that Ankara was ready to “support” Syria’s operation against the Kurdish fighters if needed.
Demonstrators had already taken to the streets in several major Turkish cities with Kurdish majorities on Wednesday, including Diyarbakir and Van, according to images broadcast by the DEM.
