The Iraqi army has retaken control of a military airbase outside the town of Tal Afar in Iraq's northern province of Nineveh, as battles continued with Islamic State (IS) militants, an official Iraqi television reported on Sunday.
The Iraqi Special Operations Force, known as Golden Division, carried out an airborne attack on the airbase of the town of Tal Afar, some 70 km west of Nineveh's provincial capital city Mosul, after a wave of air strikes on the positions of IS militants in the airbase, the state-run Iraqiya channel said.
The troops seized the airbase installations after dozens of IS militants fled their positions, while fierce battles are underway in the airbase perimeter, according to the report.
The offensive apparently is part of a larger operation to free the town of Tal Afar, which is the home to a mixed population who are mainly Shiite and Sunni Turkomans, in addition to the Kurds and other ethnic and religious minorities.
The attack came as Kurdish security forces, known as Peshmerga, are making progress in different parts of the battlefields against the IS militants in northern Iraq, including their advance to free the town of Sinjar, the home to Yazidi minority.
The success of the Iraqi security forces in Nineveh province also came amid setback in Salahudin province, where the IS militants managed to recapture the oil refinery town of Baiji and imposed a siege on the adjacent oil refinery, according to a provincial source who spoke on condition of anonymity.
However, the Iraqi security forces are preparing for a major counter attack soon to retake control of the town and to break the siege of the refinery, the source said.
The security situation in Iraq has begun to drastically deteriorate since June 10, when bloody clashes broke out between the Iraqi security forces and the IS group, an al-Qaida offshoot, which took control of the country's northern province of Nineveh and later seized swathes of territories after Iraqi security forces abandoned their posts in other Sunni provinces.