Iraqi forces move to free town from Islamist siege

KIRKUK // Iraqi security forces, Shiite militiamen and Kurdish fighters launched a major operation on Saturday to break the more than two-month Islamist siege of a Shiite Turkmen-majority town, officials said.

The operation has been in the works for days, with Iraqi aircraft carrying out strikes and forces massing for the drive toward Amerli, which has been besieged since militants led by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group launched a major offensive in June.

Residents face major shortages of food and water, and are in danger both because of their Shiite faith, which Islamists consider heresy, and their resistance to the militants, which has drawn harsh retribution elsewhere.

Army Staff Lt Gen Abdulamir Al Zaidi said the operation to free Amerli from the militants has been launched with support from Iraqi aircraft, vowing that “we will be victorious over them”.

Karim Al Nuri, spokesman for the Badr Organisation militia, said thousands of its fighters were taking part alongside civilian volunteers and security forces.

Forces from two other Shiite militias – Asaib Ahl Al Haq and powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada Al Sadr’s Saraya Al Salam forces – had also been gathering north of Amerli for the attack.

And Karim Mulla Shakur, a Kurdish political party official, said that Kurdish peshmerga fighters were also involved.

Officials have said that Washington is weighing both aid drops and air strikes to help the town.

As Islamist militants rampaged across northern Iraq in June, seizing vast swaths of territory and driving hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, the Shiite Turkmens living in Amerli decided to stay and fight.

The wheat and barley farmers took up arms, dug trenches and posted gunmen on the rooftops, and against all odds they have kept fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant out of the town of 15,000 people.

But residents are running low on food and water despite Iraqi army airlifts, and after more than six weeks under siege they say they do not know how much longer they can hold out.

“We are using all of our efforts, all of our strength to protect our city and protect our homes,” Nihad Al Bayati, an oil engineer fighting on the outskirts of the town, said.

“There is no other solution. If we have to die, so be it.”

Every three days he makes his way back into the town to see his family. He travels on back roads, hoping to avoid shelling and snipers, and keeps an eye out for flying checkpoints manned by ISIL militants who would surely kill him.

In Amerli his extended family, 17 women and children, share a single room. They have no electricity, and food and water is extremely scarce.

The town, located 170 kilometres north of Baghdad, has been completely surrounded by the insurgents since mid-July. The Iraqi military has been flying in food, medicine and weapons, but residents say the aid is not enough, and that many are falling victim to disease and heat stroke.

“The food we are getting only meets 5 per cent of our need,” said Qassim Jawad Hussein, a father of five.

He said two Iraqi military helicopters landed on Tuesday with 240 boxes of beans, rice, lentils, sugar, tomato paste and cooking oil. The helicopters have also evacuated the sick and wounded, but only have room for those most in need of care.

They face a far worse fate if the town falls. ISIL views Shiites as apostates. The group has posted grisly videos and photos of mass killings and beheadings.

Amerli is no stranger to extremist violence. In 2007 a lorry carrying 4.5 tonnes of explosives concealed under watermelons exploded in the town centre, levelling dozens of mud brick homes and killing at least 150 people, making it one of the deadliest single bombings in Iraq. That attack was blamed on Al Qaeda in Iraq, a precursor to ISIL.

Last week, the UN Special Representative for Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, called for immediate action in Amerli “to prevent the possible massacre of its citizens.”

The Obama administration, which has carried out airstrikes and aid flights to protect the Kurdish autonomous region and religious minorities elsewhere in northern Iraq, is weighing an aid operation in Amerli, three US defence officials said earlier this week on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss internal deliberations.

Iraqi troops loyal to the Shiite-led government in Baghdad are trying to relieve the town by breaking the blockade with an incursion from the west. Their US-made Apache helicopters have targeted militant positions with airstrikes, but ground troops have faced fierce resistance from the insurgents, who have also slowed their progress with booby-trapped homes and roadside bombs.

Amerli has “become an iconic point of resistance for the Shiites in Iraq,” said Michael Knights, an Iraq expert at the Washington Institute who made numerous visits to the town before the latest fighting began. “It is the last non-Sunni community that is totally exposed right now, and it is fully encircled.”

* Associated Press