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Videos posted online and reports from activists in the city said the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) fled, leaving behind hundreds of prisoners, including some who had been killed as they left.
Yusuf, a “citizen journalist” in the city, told The Daily Telegraph that 300 activists, journalists and members of other rebel groups had been freed from a makeshift jail in a former children’s hospital. Some recorded harrowing accounts of their treatment in videos posted online.
A government airstrike killed 25 al-Qaeda-linked militants in a besieged province west of Baghdad amid fierce clashes Tuesday between Iraqi special forces and insurgents battling for control of the key cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, Iraqi officials said.
The al-Qaeda gains in the Sunni-dominated province of Anbar — once bloody battlegrounds for U.S. troops — pose the most serious challenge to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Shiite-led government since the departure of American forces in late 2011.
Rival Islamist rebel groups clashed in the Syrian city of Raqqa on Monday, residents said, as local fighters tried to drive out a foreign-led al-Qaeda affiliate that has also seized towns across the border in Iraq.
Activists opposed to President Bashar al-Assad said dozens of Syrian members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) had switched sides, joining other Sunni Islamist factions which have taken advantage of a local backlash against the ISIL and the foreign al Qaeda jihadists prominent among its leaders.
An al-Qaeda affiliate rebel group pulled out from strategic areas of northern Syria near the Turkish border on Sunday after coming under heavy fire from other Islamist brigades, opposition activists said.
Fighting erupted in the last few days between the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an al-Qaeda division led by foreign jihadists, and other home-grown Islamist groups, including the al-Nusra Front, another al-Qaeda affiliate. The clash was a culmination of tensions over territory and spheres of influence in the region near a long border with Turkey.
The Iraqi army shelled the western city of Falluja with mortar bombs overnight to try to wrest back control from militants, killing at least eight people, tribal leaders and officials said on Saturday, according to Reuters.
Al-Qaeda-linked fighters took control of the Iraqi city of Fallujah following a bloody battle with security forces in which more than 100 people were killed. The insurgents have announced the creation of an Islamic state in Fallujah, AFP reported.