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Iraq on Tuesday announced the launch of a military operation to drive the Islamic State group out of the western Anbar province, where the extremists captured the provincial capital, Ramadi, earlier this month.
Iraqi state TV declared the start of the operation, in which troops will be backed by Shiite and Sunni paramilitary forces, but did not provide further details.
Islamic State gained full control of a border crossing between Iraq and Syria Sunday, the day after an alliance of Iraqi forces managed to take back from the terror group a town east of Ramadi and advanced to liberate another neighboring town.
Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has now full control over the Al-Walid border, which includes the two main roads between Syria and Iraq’s province of Anbar, according to Agence France Presse.
Saudi-led warplanes launched a fresh wave of air strikes across Yemen targeting Iran-backed rebels as fighting raged on the ground in the south of the country, witnesses said.
The air raids pounded arms depots under the control of the Shiite Huthi rebels in the locality of Ghula, in Omran province north of Sanaa, residents said.
A branch of the self-declared Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing of a Shiite mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia that has killed at least 19 people, a move that could represent a significant escalation of the extremist group’s operations in the kingdom.
NPR’s Leila Fadel reports from Cairo that the online statement from ISIS “named and praised the Saudi suicide bomber who detonated himself amongst a congregation of Shiite Saudis praying in a mosque in the village of al Qudaih in Qatif province.”
Islamic State militants took control of areas of the historic Syrian city of Palmyra from government forces in fierce fighting today, and the Syrian antiquities chief called on the world to save its ancient heritage from the jihadists.
The central city, known as Tadmur in Arabic, is home to a Unesco World Heritage site and is also a strategic military location in central Syria linked by highways to the cities of Homs and Damascus, some 240km to the southwest.