‘Leave or be killed’: Iraqi PM’s message to IS in battle to retake Tal Afar

A month after Iraqi forces captured the second city of Mosul, PM Haider al-Abadi announces the start of an offensive targeting Tal Afar.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has announced the start of a battle to retake Tal Afar, a key Northern Iraqi bastion of IS and one of their last remaining strongholds in the region.

The announcement comes a month after the capture by Iraqi forces of second city Mosul further east in a major blow to the jihadists.

In a televised speech, Abadi, dressed in military uniform and standing in front of an Iraqi flag and map of the country, announced “the start of an operation to free Tal Afar”.

“I am saying to Daesh that there’s no choice other than to leave or be killed,” he said, using an alternative name for IS.

“We have won all our battles, and Daesh have always lost,” he said, telling the country’s troops that “the entire world is with you.”

Tal Afar is located 70 kilometres (43 miles) west of Mosul, where US-backed government forces ended jihadist rule in July after a months-long battle.

In June 2014, IS jihadists overran Tal Afar, a Shiite enclave in the predominantly Sunni province of Nineveh, on the road between Mosul and Syria.

At the time it had a population of around 200,000, but local officials said it was now impossible to know the exact number still living inside the city as most are cut off from the outside world.

However, authorities have accused the approximately 1,000 jihadists in the city of using civilians as human shields during Iraqi and coalition air strikes earlier this week in preparation for the ground assault.

Abadi said that Iraq’s paramilitary Hashed al-Shaabi forces would help various army, police and counter-terrorism units in Tal Afar.

The umbrella organisation, which is dominated by Iran-backed Shiite militias, has already been fighting to retake a number of other Iraqi cities from the Islamic State.

AFP