Sunni Insurgents Capture Three Towns in Iraq’s Anbar: Sources
- An al Qaeda splinter group thrust east from a newly-captured Iraqi-Syrian border post on Sunday, taking three towns in the western Anbar province in a push to evict Iraqi security forces from Sunni Muslim areas, witnesses and security sources said.
Sunni militants spearheaded by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a hardline al Qaeda offshoot, have pushed the army from cities and towns across Iraq’s north and west over the past two weeks, shocking the Shi’ite-led government.
On Saturday, fighters seized the border post near the town of al-Qaim, helping ISIL secure supply lines to Syria, where it has exploited the chaos of the three-year-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad to establish a major presence.
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