Mines hold up Iraqi advance against IS in western desert

Mines and other ordnance buried by jihadists is slowing an advance by
Iraqi forces in the country's western desert bordering Syria against
one of the Islamic State group's last outposts.

"We're just a few hundred metres from (the town of) Anna but our
biggest obstacle are mines and explosive devices planted by Daesh,"
Colonel Ahmad al-Dulaimi told an AFP reporter at the scene, using an
Arabic acronym for IS.

Members of Iraq's security forces and allied paramilitary units of the
Hashed al-Shaabi, their uniform splattered in ochre, were making
painfully slow progress, with some military vehicles sinking in the
sand.

Anna, surrounded to the east, west and south, sat among scrawny trees
on the horizon.

Black smoke billowed over the town from barrels of oil set ablaze by
IS fighters to obscure the skies for US-led coalition warplanes and
Iraqi helicopters supporting the Iraqi advance, amid intermittent
automatic weapons fire.

General Abdelamir Yarallah, head of the anti-IS Joint Operations
Command, announced Tuesday that "infantry units and armour backed by
the Hashed al-Shaabi" had launched an offensive to retake Anna and
nearby Al-Rayhanna village.Anna, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) west
of the border with war-torn Syria, is one of three towns in Anbar
province of western Iraq still under IS control.

After Anna, Iraqi forces are expected to next target Rawa to the
northwest and finally Al-Qaim, close to the border with the Syrian
province of Deir Ezzor.

IS is under fire across the border in twin offensives mounted by
forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and a Kurdish-Arab
alliance backed by the United States.

Three years after IS took control of swathes of territory straddling
the two Arab states, Iraqi forces are pushing to retake all areas
seized by the jihadists, scoring their biggest victory in July with
the recapture of the country's second city Mosul.

Iraq is also preparing to launch an assault against another of the
jihadists' last remaining strongholds, the town of Hawija about 300
kilometres north of Baghdad.