Monday, May 18, 2015
Thousands of mostly Shiite paramilitary forces converged Monday on Iraq’s Anbar province, after Iraq’s prime minister ordered them into battle to help retake the capital of the predominantly Sunni province from Islamic State.
Anbar’s provincial council said 3,000 fighters from the so-called Popular Mobilization Units, a force of mostly Shiite recruits and militias, had arrived at the Habanniya military base, 16 miles east of the provincial capital, Ramadi. They were “well-equipped” to fight alongside local Sunni tribesman, according to a statement.
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Saudi forces on Monday targeted Yemeni Houthi militiamen across the border after the fighters fired at an army outpost.
The fighting comes as a Saudi-led Arab coalition resumed air strikes on the Iranian-allied Houthi militia positions in and around the southern Yemeni city of Aden overnight after a five-day humanitarian truce expired on Sunday.
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Sunday, May 17, 2015
ISIS militants on Sunday seized control of the Iraqi city of Ramadi after days of fighting and the country’s prime minister pleading with security forces not to abandon their posts, dealing a blow to U.S.-backed efforts.
Government forces retreated from bases, according to Agence France-Presse and Associated Press reporters, abandoning weapons, vehicles, and equipment as they fled the advance of the extremist Sunni militants on Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s largest province.
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The South Sudanese armed opposition faction of the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement (SPLM-IO), led by former vice-president, Riek Machar, on Saturday said they have recaptured the strategic Upper Nile state’s capital, Malakal, along with a number of previously government-held towns in response to aggression by president Salva Kiir’s government.
In a press statement released on Saturday, the office of the chairman of SPLM-IO announced that its forces under the overall command of General Johnson Olony captured the state capital of the oil-rich Upper Nile state.
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Saturday, May 16, 2015
U.S. Special Operations forces killed a senior ISIS commander during a daring raid intended to capture him in eastern Syria overnight Friday to Saturday, U.S. government officials said.
The ISIS commander, Abu Sayyaf, fought capture and was killed in the raid at al-Omar, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said in a statement. His wife, an Iraqi named Umm Sayyaf, was captured and is in detention in Iraq.
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