Second Battle of Tikrit

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• published: 10 May 2016
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Military diagram illustrating the situation in central Salahuddin province, from early to mid-March 2015. The Second Battle of Tikrit was a battle in which the Iraqi forces recaptured the city of Tikrit from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Iraqi forces consisted of the Government's Security Forces and the Popular Mobilization Forces, receiving assistance from Iran's Quds Force officers on the ground, and American, British, and French air forces. The city of Tikrit, located in the central part of the Saladin Governorate in north of Baghdad and Samarra and lying adjacent to the Tigris River, was lost to ISIL during the huge strides made by the group during its offensive in June 2014. After its capture, ISIL performed its most infamous massacre at Camp Speicher, located near Tikrit. After months of preparation and intelligence-gathering, Iraqi forces engaged in offensive operations to fully encircle and subsequently retake the city, starting on 2 March 2015. The offensive is the largest anti-ISIL operation to date, involving some 20,000–30,000 Iraqi forces, with an estimated 13,000 ISIL fighters present. It was reported that 90% of the residents of the city left out of fear both of ISIL and retaliatory attacks by Shia militias once the city is captured. As such, most of the residents fled to nearby cities, such as Baghdad and Samarra, or even further to Iraqi Kurdistan or Lebanon. On 4 April, after several days of heavy fighting and acts of vengeance committed by some Shi'ite militias, the situation in the city was reported to have been stabilized, and the last pockets of ISIL resistance were eliminated, with an Iraqi Police Major reporting that 'The situation now is calm.' However, on 5 April, continued resistance by 500 ISIL fighters in the city was reported in several pockets, which persisted for another week as government forces continued combing Tikrit for hiding ISIL fighters, especially in the northern Qadisiya District. On 12 April 2015, Iraqi forces declared that Tikrit was finally free of all ISIL forces, stating that it was safe for residents to return. However, pockets of resistance persisted until 17 April, when the last 140 ISIL sleeper agents in the city were killed. Cleanup and defusing operations in the city continued, but Iraqi officials predicted that it would take at least several months to remove the estimated 5,000–10,000 IEDs left behind by ISIL in Tikrit. Tikrit, the hometown of former Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein, fell to ISIL during the offensive in June 2014. A first attempt to recapture the city in late June 2014 was repelled by ISIL after a few days, as well as another Iraqi attempt to recapture the city in July 2014. Subsequent efforts in December 2014 also failed to make headway against ISIL, which consolidated control over Tikrit and its environs. On the morning of 19 August 2014, Iraqi government troops and allied militiamen launched a major operation, to retake the city of Tikrit from the militants. The military push started early in the morning from the south and southwest of the city. However, by the afternoon, the offensive had been repelled by the insurgents. Additionally, the military lost its positions in the southern area of the city it had captured a few weeks earlier. The operation in Tikrit counted as the first major attempt by both Iraqi military and the Iran-backed Shiite to recapture ground seized by Islamic state group the previous summer. Video Empire produces videos read aloud. Use the information in this video at your own risk. We cannot always guarantee accuracy. This video uses material from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Tikrit, licensed with CC Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0. This video is licensed with CC Attribution-Share-Alike 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/ In order to adapt this content it is required to comply with the license terms. Image licensing information is available via: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Tikrit