Iraq: 38 Daesh militants killed in Anbar

ANBAR

Iraqi security forces, backed by the U.S.-led international coalition and tribal fighters, killed 38 Daesh militants Wednesday in Anbar province in western Iraq, security sources said.

In the first operation, the army targeted Daesh (the Arabic acronym for ISIL) militants who used an abandoned school as a meeting place. 

“Based on accurate information, the Iraqi air forces targeted al-Jomhouriya school in central Faluja by six missiles, leaving 13 Daesh militants dead, including Na’im al-Shaha, Daesh's commander in Faluja,” a police source who preferred not to divulge his name said.

In the second operation, Iraqi army and police forces, backed by al-Ibeid tribe and the U.S.-led international coalition, freed al-Hawija al-Baghdadi area, located 12 kilometers east of Ayn al-Asad military air base.

They killed 25 Daesh militants in the clashes, Lieutenant Colonel Ahmed al-Ibeidi, an Iraqi army officer, told The Anadolu Agency.

The death toll could not be independently verified.

Iraq has plunged into a security vacuum since June 2014 when Daesh stormed the northern Iraqi province of Mosul and declared what it called a caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

The group has seized control of vast swathes of Iraq and Syria despite airstrikes conducted by U.S.-led coalition forces since August 2014.