IS poses threat to Iraq one month after ‘liberation’

MOSUL, Iraq — Barely a month after Baghdad declared victory over the Islamic State group, the jihadists could still recapture areas of Iraq, especially near the border with Syria, experts and officials say.

Ali al-Bayati, a commander of the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary units which fought alongside Iraqi security forces in a grueling battle against the group, says the Nimrud area of northern Iraq could “fall at any time because security there is fragile.”

Last July, the authorities in Baghdad announced with much fanfare the “liberation” of nearby Mosul, Iraq’s second city and capital of Nineveh province.

IS fighters who fled their former stronghold and took refuge to the west, in the vast desert towards the Syrian border, have since launched attacks on security forces and civilians, Bayati says.

Hiding out in valleys and gullies as well as trenches dug before their ouster from Mosul, the jihadists have built up stockpiles of arms, fuel, water and food and pose a persistent threat to populated districts along the Tigris valley, like the Nimrud area downstream from Mosul.

— AFP