Iraqi forces remove Daesh from vicinity of US base in Syria

Members of the Iraqi Army's 9th Armoured Division are seen inside a building at the frontline during the ongoing fighting between the Iraqi forces and Daesh in Mosul, Iraq. (Reuters)

IRBIL: The Iraqi Army and tribal fighters have dislodged Daesh from the Al-Waleed border crossing into Syria, an Iraqi military statement said on Saturday.
The capture of Al-Waleed removes Daesh militants from the vicinity of a US base located on the other side of the border, in Syrian territory.
Aircraft from the US-led coalition and the Iraqi Air Force took part in the operation, the statement said.
Al-Waleed is close to Tanf, a strategic Syrian border crossing with Iraq on the Baghdad-Damascus highway, where US forces have assisted Syrian fighters trying to recapture territory from Daesh.
US forces have been based at Tanf since last year, in effect preventing Iranian-backed forces supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad from receiving heavy weaponry from Iran by using the main highway between Iraq and Syria.
The involvement of Iraqi tribal fighters in the operation to dislodge the militants from Al-Waleed is another indication that Iran will not yet be able to use the highway.
Pro-Assad forces in Syria, mainly comprising Iraqi Shiite militias, last week reached the Iraqi border north-east of Tanf, potentially preventing the US-backed opposition fighters from taking more territory from Daesh alongside the border area with Iraq.
In Mosul, where a US-backed offensive against Daesh on Saturday entered its ninth month, the militants have been squeezed into an enclave on the western bank of the Tigris river.
Daesh also controls territory along the border with Syria and urban pockets west and south of Mosul. In Syria, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, made up predominantly of Kurdish fighters, have seized territory to the north, east and west of Raqqa, Daesh’s Syrian bastion.
Daesh snipers are shooting at families trying to flee on foot or by boat across the Tigris River, as part of a tactic to keep civilians as human shields, it said.
Iraqi government forces regained eastern Mosul in January, then a month later began the offensive on the western side that includes the Old City, a dense maze of narrow alleyways where fighting is mainly done house by house.
The fall of Mosul would, in effect, mark the end of the Iraqi half of the “caliphate” that Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi declared in a speech from a historic mosque in the Old City three years ago, covering parts of Iraq and Syria.
Moscow said on Friday its forces may have killed Baghdadi in an airstrike in Syria last month, but Washington said it could not corroborate the death and Western and Iraqi officials were skeptical.
About 200,000 people were estimated to be trapped behind Daesh lines in Mosul in May, but the number has declined as government forces have thrust further into the city.