people flee Iraqi city of Hit after ISIS 180,000 claims town

Oct. 15, 2014

180,000 people flee Iraqi city of Hit after ISIS claims town

people flee Iraqi city of Hit after ISIS 180,000 claims town 15_E2_7

ISIS has been on the offensive in the desert province of Anbar, bordering Syria, in recent weeks. The town of Hit fell on October 2 and nearby Kubaisa on October 4.

اقتباس :: LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online): ISIS fighters extended their advance by overrunning a military base that the Iraqi army had abandoned five miles west of Hit earlier this week.

These developments have raised high concerns in the West as the areas is close to Baghdad and demonstrates the group's reach. While operating successfully in Anbar, ISIS is also on the verge of taking the strategic town of Kobani hundreds of miles away in northern Syria on the border with Turkey.

Three bombs exploded in Shi'ite parts of Baghdad on Monday. Thirty people were killed according to police and medical officials. It was just the latest in a wave of attacks targeting Iraq's majority religious group.

While there was no claim of responsibility for the bombings, Islamic State claimed a string of attacks in Baghdad on Sunday that left 45 dead.

Fighting and air strikes in Anbar, carried out by the Iraqi government coupled with a U.S.-led military coalition, up to 30,000 families or 180,000 individuals have been forced to flee Hit, the United Nation's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

The war in Anbar and its conquest of Mosul have allowed Islamic State to hold territory from eastern Syria across Sunni parts of Iraq with the goal of establishing a caliphate.

In the meantime, three Islamic State fighters blew themselves up in Kobani, a monitoring group said, with the hardline militants making slight advances inside the besieged Kurdish town.

According to reports, an Islamic State fighter detonated a truck laden with explosives in a northern district of Kobani, which has already been the scene of heavy clashes between Kurdish forces and Islamic State fighters.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported heavier fighting inside the city, where U.S.-led air strikes have so far failed to halt the militants' advance.

Rami Abderahman of the Observatory said one of the suicide attacks targeted a bus station in the northwest of Kobani and that the group had taken around 50 percent of the town.

"They now control the cultural center, which means they have advanced further inside the town," he said.