US-led Iraq forces reclaim city of Hawija

US-backed Iraqi forces announced on Thursday that they had recaptured Hawija, a city about 300km north of Baghdad, which had been under the rule of IS since 2014.

Hawija was one of the last IS strongholds in the nation, and after the Iraq army took back the region on Wednesday, killing 196 militants and liberating 98 villages and their 150,000 inhabitants, the terrorist group was left with just a small amount of land stretching across Iraq's western border with Syria.

Lieutenant General Abdel Amir Yarallah, commander of the operation said on Thursday that troops, police, and paramilitaries had "liberated the whole of the centre of Hawija and are continuing their advance."

Despite having retaken the Rashad air base to the city's south, an IS training ground, on Tuesday, as many as 78,000 civilians remained trapped within Hawija, with both Iraqi security forces and IS militants preventing people from leaving the town by laying explosives in the streets.

According to the United Nations, roughly 12,500 people had fled Hawija since the assault began in late September.

The US-led coalition of Iraqi soldiers and militia allies reclaimed the second largest city in the country, Mosul, in July after a nine-month long battle with IS.