ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Two of Islamic State's (ISIS) top local leaders in the town of Gayara, southern Mosul, were killed on Saturday in airstrikes carried out by warplanes from the US-led coalition, a Kurdish official told Rudaw. "Today the coalition warplanes killed Mahdi Luizi, the ISIS Gayara Wali [governor], and Hamadi Khafaji, in charge of ISIS mortars," Ismat Rajab, a Kurdish official from Mosul, now in exile, told Rudaw. The Iraqi army launched military operations to retake Gayara and Shargat, two strategic towns in southern Mosul, on June 18. Gayara is a large town on the Tigris River, 80 kilometres south of Mosul. By capturing Gayara and neighbouring Shargat, the Iraqi army will edge closer to Mosul, ISIS’ main stronghold in Iraq. In the meantime, Baghdad announced another offensive against ISIS in Anbar province's far eastern town of Khalidiya Jazira, which has long been held by the militant group. "Following the control of Halabisa, Albu Alawan, and Albu Aifan, the Iraqi security forces in coordination with tribal fighters, Iraqi and coalition fighter jets, the Khalidiya Jazira operation was launched in eastern Ramadi," said Raji Issawi, deputy head of the security committee of Anbar Provincial Council. Issawi added that "Daesh [ISIS] militants are fiercely defending. But the security forces are advancing according to military plans." He suggested that the town will "soon be liberated." Like Gayara, ISIS took over Khalidiya Jazira in mid-2014. It is considered an important stronghold of the extremists in eastern Ramadi. Located in the desert between Samarra and Ramadi, it is an ideological heartland for Islamic extremists, having been a stronghold of al Qaeda before the rise of Islamic State. In other military developments, ISIS suffered a defeat when Kurdish Peshmerga forces repelled a furious attack launched by the group, killing 20 militants in Mosul's northern town of Tel Skuf.
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