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| Iraq |
| Airstrikes commence in Tikrit, Iraq |
| 2015-03-26 |
| [CNN] Airstrikes started Wednesday in Tikrit, where Iraqi and coalition forces are battling to wrest control from ISIS. "These strikes are intended to destroy ISIL strongholds with precision, thereby saving innocent Iraqi lives while minimizing collateral damage to infrastructure," said Lt. Gen. James L. Terry, commanding general of the international coalition, led by the United States. "This will further enable Iraqi forces under Iraqi command to maneuver and defeat ISIL in the vicinity of Tikrit," he said, using an alternative acronym for ISIS. At the request of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, the coalition is providing " According to a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the first wave of |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 Iran-led forces are worsted in Tikrit in Tehran’s first battlefield encounter with ISIS The offensive launched by a mixed force of the Iraqi army (10,000 troops) and Iranian-led Shiite militias (20,000) to capture Tikrit from the Islamic State has been thrown back, upsetting rosy US-led coalition predictions. The fighting for this important Sunni city died down – not because the Iraqi troops and their assorted Iraqi, Afghan and Pakistan Shiite allies had thrown in the sponge, but because the casualties inflicted on them by the Islamic State had become too heavy to bear and carry on fighting. This momentous debacle was first revealed in DEBKA Weekly 656 of March 20. Official figures have still not been released by Baghdad or the Iranian command staff headed by Al Qods Brigades chief, the legendary Gen. Qassem Soleimani. But the losses were crippling – some sources estimating them at roughly one tenth of the mixed force. Entire units were disabled and scattered. Some Iraqi army contingents fled the battlefield in disarray without a word to their officers – repeating their earlier performance last June when ISIS launched its first offensive to seize territory in Iraq. Iraqi and Iranian officers have since fallen to quarrelling over responsibility for the shambles, especially targeting the most prominent figure, Gen. Hadi Al-Amiri, commander of the Shiite Badr Brigade. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2015-03-26 17:33 |