Iran-backed militia captures Baaj from Daesh

Iraq’s Iranian-backed Shia paramilitary has captured from Daesh Baaj, an area near the border with Syria, Iraqi state TV said on Sunday.

Eight months into the Mosul offensive, Daesh militants have been dislodged from all of the city except an enclave along the western bank of the Tigris river.

Daesh’s grip on the Iraqi side of the northern region along the border with Syria, a desert area where Iraqi and US sources believe Daesh leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is hiding, has been ebbing as forces fighting on the side of Iraq’s government have advanced.

The Iraqi air force provided cover for the thrust into Baaj of the Shia paramilitaries known as Popular Mobilisation Force, said a statement from the Iraqi joint operations command. Popular Mobilisation Force is steered by neighbouring Shia regional power Iran, an adversary of the United States, but is playing a part in the campaign to defeat Daesh, an enemy of both, in Mosul and the surrounding province of Nineveh.

Just last week, the milita group said it had dislodged Daesh from a number of villages west of Mosul, scoring further progress towards the border with Syria.

The villages taken by the Popular Mobilisation paramilitary force include Kojo, where Daesh fighters abducted hundreds of Yazidi women in 2014, including Nadia Murad and Lamiya Aji Bashar, recipients of the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought.