MOSUL, Iraq, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi F-16 jet fighters carried out on Thursday airstrikes on suspected Islamic State (IS) posts in and near the IS-held town of Tal Afar in west of the newly-freed city of Mosul, the Iraqi military said.
Based on intelligence reports, the jets bombarded a huge weapons and ammunition warehouse in al-Askari neighborhood, which is one of the main IS redoubts in the town of Tal Afar, some 70 km west of Mosul, destroying a large quantities of weapons and ammunition, the media office of the Joint Operations Command (JOC) said in a statement.
The jets also bombarded two IS headquarters in the town of al-Aydhiyah, some 10 km northwest of Tal Afar, destroying the two posts and killing at least six IS militants, the statement said.
The air strikes came after Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on July 10 officially declared Mosul liberated from IS after nearly nine months of fierce fighting to dislodge the extremist militants from their last major stronghold in Iraq.
Earlier in the month, Iraqi military officials, including Abdul Amir Yarallah from the Joint Operations Command, said after the liberation of Mosul the troops will advance westward to free Tal Afar, the last IS redoubt in Nineveh province.
Tal-Afar is home to majority of both Sunni and Shiite Turkomans, in addition to other minorities of Kurds and Arabs. The town fell to IS in 2014.
