ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Shiite paramilitary force of the Hashd al-Shaabi declared on Thursday it had fully liberated the town of Hazar, or Hatra, south of Mosul and began moving thousands of people out of the town.
Hatra is a UNISCO World Heritage-listed site that ISIS is said to have destroyed it.
The media office of the Hashd al-Shaabi announced in a statement that the force’s 11th and 2nd brigades expelled ISIS militants in Hazar and have begun clearing it of the radical group’s remnants.
In the meantime, the Hashd al-Shaabi Security Directorate Board announced that since the town has been reclaimed, they moved 5,000 persons out of the town.
The board detailed since the operation began “to reclaim the southern part of Mosul, the board has so far evacuated 5,500 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and some 16,000 sheep belonging to the people of the area to a safe area.”
The “Mohammed Rasulullah” operation to retake the town commenced on April 25.
The town is a strategic conjunction connecting the three Sunni dominated provinces of Nineveh, Salahadin and Anbar.
Hazar, a town near Tal Afar, fell to ISIS when the group swept across Iraq in a blitzkrieg in June 2014.
Since the operation to reclaim the city of Mosul started in October 2016, the Hashd forces have been fighting on the city’s western front, tasked with closing the route between Mosul and the militants’ so-called capital, the Syrian city of Raqqa and reclaiming the ISIS stronghold Tal Afar.
ِAFP photos show the ancient site of Hatara after it was reclaimed by the mainly-Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi forces on Wednesday, some of which damaged.
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