Iraqi forces invaded on Wednesday the center of Hawija town, Islamic State’s major bastion in southwestern Kirkuk, the Iraqi military command said. The Popular Mobilization Forces’ media outlet had said earlier on Wednesday that Iraqi forces  fully recaptured the town, but a later statement by the Joint Operations Command suggested that the invasion of the town’s center was just beginning. It said army, Federal Police, Rapid Response Forces, and PMF caused “serious losses” for IS militants with the invasion.
JOC field commander, Abdul-Amir Yarallah, said operations have so far seized back 98 villages and left 196 militants dead. The decisive onslaught came as part of a second stage of operations launched last Friday to seize the town held by Islamic State militants since 2014. The first phase of operations launched on September 24th, and managed to retake eastern Shirqat, an Islamic State haven in neighboring Salahuddin province.
If the Hawija offensive ends successfully, it would mean that only western Anbar’s towns of Rawa and Qaim remain under the militant’s control. Iraqi troops recaptured the town of Annah, a third IS holdout neighboring those two towns, late September.
A wide-scale campaign launched with the backing of a U.S.-led coalition in 2016 to recapture areas occupied by IS since 2014, when the militants declared a self-styled “caliphate” rule in Iraq and neighboring Syria based in Iraq’s Mosul. Iraqi government, coalition and paramilitary forces recaptured Mosul, the group’s former capital, and the neighboring town of Tal Afar early July and late August.
In the same context, Diyala police service said Wednesday security forces killed a suicide bomber before he carried out an attack on civilians.
Ghaleb al-Attiya, media official at the province’s police department, told Alsumaria News that a police force killed a suicide bomber after trapping him inside a vehicle he was riding at al-Kawthar, east of Baqubah. Meanwhile, Alsumaria News quoted a local source saying that Mutaibija, an Islamic State militancy hotspot on the borders between Diyala and Salahuddin, has witnessed an “unprecedented calm” over the past 24  hours.
According to the source, the current quietness follows the death of several senior IS leaders in  air raids. “Infiltrations of Mutaibija from Hawija and nearby regions have completely stopped over the past three days after all ground routes through Hamreen mountains were cut off.
Diyala and the borders with Salahuddin have seen occasional attacks by the militants on civilians and security forces, as well as counter offensives by government and paramilitary troops, over the past months as an Iraqi, U.S.-backed campaign pressed on to recapture areas held by the group since 2014.
A monthly count by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI), which excludes security members deaths, said 196 Iraqi civilians were killed, while 381 others were wounded due to violence and armed conflicts during the month of September. The fatalities included 10 foreign nationals. Iraqi forces are currently battling Islamic State out of its last few strongholds in Kirkuk and Anbar.
On the political side, Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi on Tuesday called for a “joint administration” of Kirkuk and other areas claimed by both his government and the autonomous Kurdish region, provided that Baghdad has ultimate authority in such an arrangement.
Al-Abadi’s proposal, made at a news conference in Baghdad according to state TV, aims mainly at settling the dispute over the multi-ethnic, oil-rich region of Kirkuk. Kurdish Peshmerga fighters took control of Kirkuk in 2014, when Iraqi forces collapsed in the face of Daesh advance across northern Iraq.