BAGHDAD: The Iraq army said it launched an assault on Friday on the small Euphrates valley town of Rawa, the last in the country still held by Daesh.
“Operations to liberate Rawa began at dawn,” the Joint Operations Command said in a statement.
The launch of the attack as the Syrian army battled for a second day to retake the town of Albu Kamal just across the border.
An army general contacted by AFP at the front predicted that the battle for Rawa would be swift as “the majority of IS fighters who were in the town have fled toward the Syrian border,” using another acronym to describe Daesh.
The US-led coalition battling the jihadists said on Thursday that they had lost 95 percent of the cross-border “caliphate” the size of Britain that they declared in Iraq and Syria in 2014.
Iraq launches assault on last Daesh-held town in country: army
Iraq launches assault on last Daesh-held town in country: army
Over 10,000 people displaced in 3 days in Sudan: UN agency
- The conflict has created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises
PORT SUDAN: Violence in western and southern Sudan displaced more than 10,000 people within three days this week, according to figures released by the UN’S migration agency on Sunday.
Since April 2023, Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have waged what the UN has called a “war of atrocities,” killing tens of thousands of people and uprooting more than 11 million.
Between Dec. 25 and 26, attacks on the villages of Um Baru and Kernoi near Sudan’s western border with Chad displaced more than 7,000 people, according to the International Organization for Migration.
After its takeover of the North Darfur capital of El-Fasher in October, the RSF has pushed westward in recent days, through enclaves inhabited by the Zaghawa ethnic group and controlled by a militia.
Between Christmas Eve and Friday, a further 3,100 people were displaced from the famine-stricken city of Kadugli in South Kordofan, which has been under siege by paramilitary forces for over a year and a half.
Resource-rich Kordofan is currently experiencing the fiercest fighting, as the RSF and its allies seek to recapture Sudan’s central corridor, which runs from Darfur back toward the capital, Khartoum.
The conflict has created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.
It has also effectively split Sudan in two, with the army controlling the north, east, and center while the RSF dominates all five state capitals in Darfur and, with its allies, parts of the south.
