BAGHDAD: Teamed up with paramilitary forces, Iraqi government troops on Tuesday drove Daesh militants out of a key oil refinery town north of Baghdad, a government spokesman said.
The Joint Military Command spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool, said the troops imposed “full control” on the town, about 250 km north of Baghdad. Rasool wouldn’t give more details on the fighting and causalities.
State-run TV aired footage of what it said was a residential area in Beiji. Soldiers could be seen waving Iraqi flags from rooftops as thick black smoke billowed into the air. The privately owned Al-Sumaria satellite channel showed troops firing into the air in celebration near demolished buildings. The troops were gathered around a famous bearded militia fighter who refers to himself as Abu Azrael, or the Father of the Angel of Death, saying his catchphrase “illa tahin” — meaning he will crush the Daesh militants like flour.
Daesh captured Beiji and then parts of a nearby oil refinery — Iraq’s largest — during its blitz across the country’s north in June 2014. The town and the refinery have been heavily contested since then. Iraq announced that troops had recaptured the entire refinery last week.
Speaking to reporters traveling to Iraq with Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Filanowski added that the Iraqi forces, largely special operations troops, secured the refinery’s perimeter and the power plant to the north, and are slowly moving toward the center of the refinery, clearing out enemy fighters and encountering booby traps and sniper fire.
According to US Lt. Col. Mike Filanowski, an intelligence officer with the military’s joint task force in Baghdad, about a dozen Iraqis have been killed and 30 wounded in the fight over the last 72 hours. Filanowski and other US officials in Baghdad, said there are about 15,000 Iraqi forces in the Beiji area.
Iraqi forces recapture Beiji town from Daesh
Iraqi forces recapture Beiji town from Daesh
Israel army kills West Bank attacker who tried to run over troops
- The Palestinian civil affairs authority named the man as 20-year-old Qais Sami Jaser Allan, adding that he “was shot by the occupation forces between the towns of Einabus and Awarta”
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said its troops shot dead a man who tried to run over a group of soldiers in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday.
The incident occurred in Einabus in the northern West Bank, the military said.
“A short while ago, a report was received regarding a terrorist who attempted to run over IDF (Israeli army) soldiers operating in the area of Einabus,” the military said.
“In response, the soldiers fired at the terrorist and eliminated him.”
The Palestinian Red Crescent said it rescued three people after the Israeli army opened fire near Einabus on a vehicle with Palestinian license plates.
“Two of the wounded were shot, and one of them is in critical condition. The third was injured as a result of being beaten,” the Red Crescent said.
The Palestinian civil affairs authority named the man as 20-year-old Qais Sami Jaser Allan, adding that he “was shot by the occupation forces between the towns of Einabus and Awarta.”
The incident came just days after a Palestinian from the West Bank ran over an Israeli in his sixties with his vehicle and later stabbed an 18-year-old girl to death in northern Israel.
The perpetrator was killed during the attack.
Following that incident on Friday, the military conducted a two-day operation in the West Bank town of Qabatiya from where the attacker came, detaining several residents including his father and brothers.
Since the start of the war in Gaza following Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023, violence has also surged in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
Israeli troops and settlers have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the territory, including many militants as well as dozens of civilians, according to an AFP tally based on figures from the Palestinian health ministry.
According to official Israeli figures, at least 44 Israelis, both soldiers and civilians, have also been killed in Palestinian attacks or Israeli military operations in the same period in the West Bank.
