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Thousands of Iraqis have fled an Islamic State-held town west of Mosul as Iraqi and coalition warplanes step up strikes ahead of a ground offensive to drive out the militants.

Tal Afar and the surrounding area is one of the last pockets of IS-held territory in Iraq after victory was declared in July in Mosul, the country's second-largest city. The town, about 150 kilometers (93 miles) east of the Syrian border, sits along a major road that was once a key IS supply route.

On Monday, hundreds of exhausted civilians were brought by Iraqi army trucks from the front line to a humanitarian collection point just west of Mosul. Many described a harrowing journey of a day or more from Tal Afar, with no food or water.

Jassem Aziz Tabo, an elderly man who arrived with his 12-member family, said he had left Tal Afar months ago and gone to a village on the outskirts to escape hunger, airstrikes and violence from the militants.

"Those who tried to escape were captured and shot in the head. They killed my son," he said. "He tried to escape, he was caught and they killed him."

He said severe shortages have caused the price of food to skyrocket in Tal Afar, which has been besieged by Iraqi forces for months, with a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of sugar selling for $50.

"There was nothing. We were eating pieces of bread with water," he said.

Alia Imad, a mother of three whose family paid $300 to a smuggler to lead them to safety, said there is no drinking water left in the town. "Most people drink water that's not clean. The majority are surviving on that and a bit of bread," she said.

The group she was with had come under fire during their escape from the militants, she said. A woman was killed, and they had to bury her by the road.

Lise Grande, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator, said conditions in Tal Afar are "very tough."

"Thousands of people are leaving, seeking safety and assistance. Families escaping northeast are trekking 10 and up to 20 hours to reach mustering points. They are exhausted and many are dehydrated when they finally arrive," she said.

Lt. Gen. Anwar Hama, of the Iraqi air force, told The Associated Press that airstrikes this week have targeted IS headquarters, tunnels and weapons' stores.

But Iraqi forces, closely backed by the U.S.-led coalition, are not expected to push into the town for another few weeks, according to an Iraqi officer overseeing the operation. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Iraqi army, federal police and special forces units are expected to participate in the operation, as well as state-sanctioned mostly Shiite militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces.

The militiamen largely stayed out of the operation to retake Mosul, a mostly Sunni city, but have vowed to play a bigger role in Tal Afar, which was mostly Shiite before it fell to IS, a Sunni extremist group. The militias captured Tal Afar's airport, on the outskirts of the town, last year.

Their participation in the coming offensive could heighten sectarian and regional tensions. Tal Afar was once home to Shiite and Sunni Arabs, as well as a sizable ethnic Turkmen community with close ties to neighboring Turkey. Turkish officials have expressed concern that once territory is liberated from IS, Iraqi Kurdish or Shiite forces may push out Sunni Arabs or ethnic Turkmen.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said his country would be watching the operation closely.

"Tal Afar is a town where almost the entire population is Turkmen. We have always considered it a priority for the region to be cleared from (IS) and for it to be returned to its owners," Bozdag said after a Cabinet meeting Tuesday.

"Turkey has always said that the region's demographic and religious makeup must be taken into consideration," Bozdag said. The state-backed militias "should not enter the region."

On Monday, the Iraqi army began moving an armored brigade to the front line south of Tal Afar, while an infantry division was deployed about 30 kilometers (19 miles) to the town's east.

Brig. Gen. Abdul Hussein al-Khazali, deputy commander of the army's 15th division, said his forces were going to inch closer to Tal Afar village by village before they are ready to launch the final attack, partly to ensure they can protect fleeing civilians.

The United Nations says some 49,000 people have fled the Tal Afar district since April, compounding a humanitarian crisis that has lingered despite the cessation of major fighting inside Mosul. It says nearly a million people were displaced by the Mosul campaign.

Abdul-Zahra reported from Baghdad. Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey contributed to this report.

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Thousands flee as Iraq steps up airstrikes on IS-held town - ABC News

ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi forces are carrying out air strikes on Tal Afar, a town held by Islamic State west of Mosul, in preparation for a ground assault, an Iraqi military spokesman said on Tuesday.

Islamic State's self-proclaimed caliphate effectively collapsed last month, when U.S.-backed Iraqi forces completed the recapture of Mosul, the militants' capital in northern Iraq, after a nine-month campaign.

Parts of Iraq and Syria remain however under Islamic State control, especially along the border.

Iraqi authorities had said Tal Afar, 80 km (50 miles) west of Mosul, will be the next target in the war on Islamic State, who swept through parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014.

The town, which had about 200,000 residents before falling to Islamic State, experienced cycles of sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shi'ites after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, and has produced some of Islamic State's most senior commanders.

"The preparations are under way, there are strikes aimed at wearing them down and keeping them busy, targeting their command and control centers, their depots... these strikes have been going on for some time," Iraqi military spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Rasool said in a statement.

"We are waiting for the commander in chief of the armed forces (Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi)to give the orders for the liberation battle to start."

Earlier on Tuesday, Baghdad-based al-Sumariya TV quoted Defence Ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Khodari as saying the ground attack should start after the aerial bombardment campaign.

Tal Afar has become the focus of a wider regional struggle for influence. Turkey, which claims affinity with Tal Afar's predominantly ethnic Turkmen population, opposes the involvement of Shi'ite paramilitary groups fighting with Iraqi forces, some of which are backed by Iran.

One of Iraq's senior military commanders, Major-General Najm al-Jabouri, told Reuters last month that between 1,500 and 2,000 militants were in Tal Afar, a figure which possibly includes some family members who support them.

The U.S.-led coalition is also keeping up its support to the Iraqi forces' campaign to end the militants presence all over the country.

Coalition spokesman Colonel Ryad Dillon said last Thursday that the coalition carried out more than 50 strikes in the past week against Islamic State defensive positions, headquarters, weapons caches, and bomb factories in Tal Afar and also Kisik Junction to the east.

"We fully expect this to be a difficult fight to root out ISIS from one of their last strongholds in Iraq," Dillon told a news briefing.

Jabouri had a different assessment of the battle, expecting a relatively easy victory because the militants and their families there are "worn out and demoralized".

Islamic State has also lost swathes of Syrian territory to separate campaigns being waged by Syrian government forces backed by Russia and Iran and by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic (SDF) Forces, which is dominated by the Kurdish YPG militia. The SDF is currently focused on capturing Raqqa city from Islamic State.

Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Angus MacSwan

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Iraq bombing Islamic State-held Tal Afar ahead of assault: Iraqi military spokesman - Reuters

The soldiers have been identified as 22-year-old Sgt. Allen L. Stigler Jr., left, of Arlington, Texas, and 30-year-old Sgt. Roshain E. Brooks of Brooklyn, New York.

U.S. Army via AP

WASHINGTON -- A Pentagon spokesman says the two U.S. soldiers killed Sunday in Iraq were casualties of a U.S. artillery "mishap.

The soldiers have been identified as 22-year-old Sgt. Allen L. Stigler Jr. of Arlington, Texas, and 30-year-old Sgt. Roshain E. Brooks of Brooklyn, New York.

Both were cannon crew members assigned to 2nd Battalion, 319th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division.

The Pentagon spokesman, Army Col. Rob Manning, says an Army artillery unit was firing on an Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, mortar position "when a mishap occurred." Manning says there is no indication that ISIS played a role in the deaths. He says he cannot provide other details because the incident is under investigation.

Five others suffered injuries that Manning says are not life-threatening.

2017 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Pentagon: US soldiers killed in Iraq were casualties of artillery "mishap" - CBS News

By Gne Murat Tezcr By Gne Murat Tezcr August 15 at 8:00 AM

Three years ago this month, the Islamic State started a systematicattack againstthe Kurdish-speaking Yazidi minority based in the Sinjar area ofnorthwestern Iraq. We now have a better understanding of the militant groups patterns of violence and goals because of the discovery of mass graves, survivor testimonies and the Islamic Statespublic declarations.

This new evidence tells us that while the Islamic States extremist ideology provided the guiding principle, large numbers of locals with varying motives actively participatedin these atrocities. The pursuit of material gains and stigmatization of the Yazidis as a marginalized religious minority have been the driving factors of the violence at the local level.

The precarious existence of the Yazidis

While many other ethnoreligious groups in northern Iraq have been subject to various degrees of Islamic State violence, the treatment of the Yazidis at the hands of the groupamounts to what human rights organizationsdeem genocide: including mass executions and abductions, sexual enslavement and forced conversions. Out of an estimated 400,000 Yazidi people living in Sinjar, at least 10,000were either killed or abducted. Almost the entire population is displaced.

The Yazidis, an insulated and internally hierarchical community, have a long history of persecution and victimization at the hands of Muslim rulers and extremist organizations. While the Yazidis have lived among Sunni Arabs and Kurds side by side for centuries, discriminatory practices and social distance characterized interreligious relations, including the widespread perception that Yazidis are devil worshipers. In the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, many Yazidis gained new employment opportunities under the de facto Kurdish control over the area that generated resentment among local Arabs.

The Islamic States ideology and Yazidis

In this historical context, the rapid advance of the Islamic State into the Sinjar area became a disaster for the Yazidis. The Islamic States ideology defines the Yazidis as polytheists who have no right to exist under Islamic rule. In many instances, captured Yazidis were given the choice of conversion or death and enslavement.

In 2014, a large village about 15 miles south of Sinjar called Kocho held off Islamic State fighters in a siege that lasted 12 days. As recounted by a survivor, eventually, the Islamic State fighters stormed the village and massacred about 400 men immediately and about 80 elderly women later. The remaining women and children were treated as slaves and sold to Islamic State fighters. Even while the Islamic State took pains to say that it prohibited gang rape as Yazidi women were supposed to be the exclusive property of their owner Islamic State fighters simply sold their slaves to other fighters.

A recent study shows that perpetrators ideology often plays a decisive role in their choice of targets and means of violence. At the same time, one needs to look beyond ideology to opportunism and deep-rooted stigmatization of the Yazidi minority to explain how the Islamic States violence against that community faced no opposition from the local population.

A recurrent theme in my conversations with Yazidis and testimonies of femalesurvivors is that not only foreign fighters but also local Iraqis and Syrians, both men and women, were actively involved in their rape and enslavement. In the words of a survivor, They did not attack us because of their ideology, but to simply have the opportunity to rape us.

While some Sunnis from the Sinjar area tried to protect their Yazidi neighbors, many others, including godfathers of Yazidi boys who were supposed to act as their protectors, participated in the enslavement of women and the robbing of the Yazidis and looting of their properties resulting in revenge attacks after the defeat of the Islamic State. The mass abduction of Yazidis has become a profitable activity for both the local population and Islamic State fighters, who often sold their captives back to their families for hefty sums via smugglers.

It is too simplistic to argue that the Yazidi tragedy is a direct and inevitable result of historical religious antagonisms. Yet, even if many of these locals did not subscribe to the Islamic State ideology and were not its members, they readily dehumanized the Yazidis after the ascendancy of the Islamic State. Deep-rooted stigmatization of Yazidis and general insecurity in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq contributed to their vulnerability as a community and enabled the Islamic State to implement its exterminating ideology and find collaboration among the local population.

This pattern of genocidal political projects mobilizing ordinary people in mass crimes has been observed in settings as diverse as Nazi Germany and Rwanda. The uniqueness of the Islamic State ideology should not obscure the fragility of intercommunal coexistence in times of crises and the difficulty of intercommunal reconciliation.

Gne Murat Tezcr isthe Jalal Talabani chair of Kurdish Political Studies and directs the Kurdish Political Studies Program at the University of Central Florida.

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Three years ago, the Islamic State massacred Yazidis in Iraq. Why? - Washington Post

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The governor of the oil city of Basra has stepped down and gone to Iran after Iraq's anti-corruption body began investigating graft allegations against him, people close to him and officials said on Tuesday.

Iraq's Integrity Commission on Monday evening issued a statement asking the foreign ministry in Baghdad to ask Iran to repatriate Nasrawi.

A Basra-based politician close to Nasrawi said the accusations against Nasrawi were "politically motivated" by rivals.

"He can travel wherever he likes as long as there are no legal obstacles," the politician said, confirming that Nasrawi had left for Iran. The governor's family declined to comment and the lawyer's association in Basra said he had no known attorney.

Oil-rich Iraq ranks 166st out of 176 nations in Transparency International's Corruption Index.

In a separate case, Samir Kubba, the director general of Iraqi Airways, has been arrested and referred to trial on graft charges, a spokesman for the Supreme Judicial Council said on Tuesday.

Judge Abdul Sattar Birqadr said he faced accusations of "bribery cases and job violations".

Majid al-Nasrawi and the Iraqi Airways boss are the highest ranking public figures to come under investigation for alleged corruption since Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi was elected three years ago, partly on a pledge to fight graft.

Graft has exacerbated the effects on the economy of a sharp decline in oil revenue caused by falling crude prices and the costs of fighting Islamic State, which took control of large parts of northern and western Iraq after 2014.

Fourteen years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, the country still suffers shortages of electricity, water, schools and hospitals, and infrastructure has been widely neglected.

Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; editing by Andrew Roche

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Iraq oil city governor quits, travels to Iran after corruption investigation - Reuters