3 missiles launched from Ein Al Assad base against Iraq’s areas

An Iraqi security source in Anbar province reported the launch of three rockets from the base of "Ein al-Asad" in the direction of Ana and Roa. Meanwhile, the office of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi said that a unit of the security forces committed "violations" against civilians during an attack to expel the ISIS militants from the Iraqi city of Mosul.

The source said that "three rockets were launched from the base of Ayn al-Assad in Anbar," indicating that "directed to the sites of the organization of a supporter in the curse and Rawa." The source gave no further details of the incident.

On the other hand, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s office said on Thursday a unit of the security forces committed “abuses” against civilians during the offensive to oust ISIS insurgents from the city of Mosul. His government began an investigation in May into a report by German newsmagazine Der Spiegel that included images of apparent torture taken by a freelance photographer embedded with the Interior Ministry’s elite Emergency Response Division (ERD).
“The committee has concluded ... that clear abuses and violations were committed by members of the ERD,” a statement from Abadi’s office said. It added that the perpetrators would be prosecuted. Spiegel’s photos showed detainees accused of affiliation with ISIS hanging from a ceiling with their arms bent behind them, and the journalist wrote of prisoners being tortured to death, raped and stabbed with knives.
The ERD was one of several government security forces backed by a US-led coalition that drove ISIS out of Mosul, the northern city the militants seized in 2014 and proclaimed their “capital”, in a nine-month campaign that ended in July. The ERD initially denied the Spiegel report and accused the German weekly of publishing “fabricated and unreal images”.
The photographer said he had initially intended to document the heroism of Iraqi forces fighting ISIS but that a darker side of the war had gradually been revealed to him. The soldiers with whom he was embedded allowed him to witness and photograph the alleged torture scenes, he said. He has now fled Iraq with his family, fearing for his safety. ISIS’ self-proclaimed “caliphate” effectively collapsed with the fall of Mosul but parts of Iraq and Syria remain however under its control, especially in border areas.

In the same context, Islamic State militants have executed three brothers in western Anbar for refusing to join the group, a paramilitary leader was quoted saying on Thursday. Qatari al-Obaifi, a senior leader at the mobilization forces in Anbar’a al-Baghdadi, told Alsumaria News that the group executed the trio in the town of Qaim, its stronghold near the Syrian borders.

They were less than 15 years of age, and were executed by a firing squad after refusing compulsory recruitment. Islamic State militants have held the towns of Anah, Rawa and Qaim, west of Anbar and near the Syrian borders, since 2014, when they occupied a third of Iraq to proclaim their self-styled “caliphate”. So far, there has not been a wide-scale campaign to retake those regions, but occasional offensives managed to take over several surrounding villages.

The Iraqi government declared victory over Islamic State in Mosul, the group’s former capital in Iraq, in July, and said it was going to proceed towards other group holdouts, including Anbar. Also late July, Iraqi warplanes reportedly dropped millions of messages telling locals that liberation offensives for the province were nearing, and telling them to stay away from militants’ deployments.