BAGHDAD, Iraq –Fierce fighting raged around Anbar’s western Heet district on Thursday between the Islamic State and the Iraqi army, just as the Kurdish Peshmerga celebrated liberating the Iraq-Syia border town of Rabia.
ISIS rebels said they had captured neighborhoods in Heet, but Sunni militias fighting alongside the Iraqi army quickly denied that, saying that fighting was ongoing.
Iraq’s NINA news agency confirmed that ISIS had moved into areas of Heet in a dawn attack, and that fierce battles raged between the militants and Iraqi forces, but the Baghdad government denied those reports.
NINA and foreign agency reports said that allied US and French jets had bombed jihadi fighters in the area, reportedly inflicting heavy losses.
NINA quoted a source as saying “the bombing led to the withdrawal of the Daash terrorist elements,” using a derogatory Arabic name for ISIS. It quoted a source as saying. “Battles in the northern regions of the district are going on.”
The fighting in Heet picked up as Kurdish guns fell silent over Rabia, where the Pehmerga evicted the last ISIS militants from a public hospital that was the last ISIS holdout in the border town, after overnight fighting.
The jihadists had been using the building as a sniper post to attack Kurdish soldiers who retook the rest of the strategic town on Tuesday.
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