Battle for Tikrit Enters Second Week

[Jesus Malverde]

A week into the ground campaign for Tikrit, Iraqi forces and allied Shi'ite militias continue to clash with Islamic State group militants on the city's outskirts in an attempt to regain territory one outlying town at a time.

The coalition is battling for al-Dour and Albu Ajil, where IS snipers are hampering efforts to clear the towns of the rebel extremists.

Thousands of troops launched Iraq's largest anti-IS offensive last Sunday to reclaim Tikrit, a strategic stronghold between government-controlled Baghdad to the south and Islamic State-held Mosul to the north.

Iraqi forces with tactical help from Iran are carrying out the operation without intervention from the U.S.-led coalition, which continued to bomb IS targets Sunday in Iraq and Syria.

The airstrikes have not supported the Tikrit offensive, but hit 12 other IS positions in Iraq on Sunday, including Mosul, Kirkuk, and Fallujah, as well as in the Syrian border city of Kobani.


http://www.voanews.com/content/battle-for-tikrit-enters-second-week/2672268.html

[Jesus Malverde]

1. As Iranian commander and Shiite militias spearhead attack on Tikrit, more questions than answers eme

As lines of Iraqi Humvees and trucks jammed the roads to Tikrit with thousands of Iraqi forces looking well-motivated and itching for battle, on the surface this would point to all the positive signs ? Iraq was finally ready to banish the Islamic State (IS) from their doorstep.


However, as Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, pointed out, eventual recapture of Tikrit is not the burning question.

The key issue is the security and political apparatus that is left behind to support Tikrit and other Sunni towns that are retaken.


Whilst Sunni tribal forces play a role in the battle for Tikrit, it is the unmissable presence of thousands of Shiite militia supervised by commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' elite Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani that speaks volumes.

http://www.kurdishglobe.net/article/AE8B37A6289AB2E21D1429B63D071ACD/As-Iranian-commander-and-Shiite-militias-spearhead-attack-on-Tikrit-more-questions-than-answers-emerge-from-Iraq.html