Friday 15 / November / 2024
Baghdad: The anti-IS coalition conducting air strikes in Iraq and Syria has killed the IS militant believed responsible for an attack on US troops in northern Iraq last month that left a Marine dead, it said on Sunday.
Militant Jasim Khadijah, a former Iraqi officer not considered a high-value target, was killed by a drone strike overnight in northern Iraq, coalition spokesman US Army Colonel Steve Warren told reporters in Baghdad.
"We have information (that) he was a rocket expert, he controlled these attacks," said Warren, referring to the shelling of a base used by US troops near the town of Makhmour, located between Mosul and Kirkuk.
That attack killed Marine Staff Sergeant Louis Cardin and wounded eight others, all part of a company-sized detachment of less than 200 troops. They provide force protection fire to Iraqi army troops, who are making slow progress in a campaign to clear areas around Mosul, an IS stronghold.
Cardin's was the second combat death of an American service member in Iraq since the start of the campaign to fight the militant group in 2014.
Warren said five other IS militants were killed in the air strike.
Meanwhile, the displaced population of Ramadi has started to return to the western Iraqi city that was recaptured from IS militants in December, a provincial official said on Sunday.
About 3,000 families have returned since Saturday to districts of Ramadi that have been cleared of mines and explosives, city governor Hameed Dulaymi told Reuters.
Families are relying on electricity generators as the public grid has not been repaired, he said. Water for domestic use is being pumped from the nearby Euphrates river, he added.
Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province 100 kilometres (62 miles) west of Baghdad, is the first major success for Iraq's army since it collapsed in the face of IS's lightning advance across the country's north and west about two years ago.
Most of the city's population of nearly half a million fled before the battle, taking shelter in camps west of Baghdad.
Meanwhile, the Czech Republic will send back to Iraq a group of Iraqi Christians who tried to move on to Germany instead of staying in the country, Interior Minister Milan Chovanec said on Sunday.
A group of 25 Iraqis took a bus on Saturday to Germany, where they were stopped immediately after crossing the border, CTK news agency reported. German police then asked the Czechs to take the people back and that was agreed, CTK said.
The Czech Republic agreed in December to accept 153 Christian refugees from Iraq who have fled areas controlled by IS. So far, only 89 have arrived.
Chovanec said that the 25 Iraqis had abused Czech generosity and should go back home soon. It was not immediately clear how Chovanec meant for them to return. Police imposed a deadline of a week for them to leave.
"The seven-day deadline, which the Iraqi Christians got along with their passports, is meant for them to be able to arrange the return home," Chovanec said on his Twitter account.
"This time cannot be used to break laws or to move to another Schengen country. I asked the Czech police to use all legal means so that these people, who abused the good will of the Czech Republic and her citizens, are returned to Iraq."
Thirty-seven Christian families are supposed to come to the Czech Republic from Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq and refugee camps in Lebanon, in four groups from January to April. Minister Chovanec has suspended the relocation programme, CTK said.
Prague has refused to accept European Union quotas for distributing migrants. Polls show a majority of Czechs would reject even those fleeing a war zone.
The Czech Republic, a country of 10.5 million, recorded 1,525 asylum applications last year, and had granted protection to 71 people, data from the Ministry of Interior showed.
Several thousand people passed through the Czech territory last year in the mass wave of migration via southeast Europe.
