Powerful blasts hit Tal Afar as airstrikes target IS building with explosives inside

Tal Afar (IraqiNews.com) A series of powerful blasts have rocked the western suburbs of Tal Afar town, west of Mosul, as airstrikes targeted huge amount of explosives, a local source from Nineveh province was quoted saying.

“Huge blasts hit the western suburbs of Tal Afar, located west of Mosul, after airstrikes targeted a building, which included a huge amount the C4 explosives, used by Islamic State militants in manufacturing bombs and booby-trapping,” the source, who preferred anonymity, told AlSumaria News on Saturday.

“The losses inflicted on IS are unidentified due to the huge blasts that made the nearby houses collapse,” the source said adding that the group “depend on secret workshops at the residential areas to manufacture the C4 substance.”

Lt.Gen. Abdul Amir Yarallah, of the Nineveh Operations Command, had said that the fourth phase of liberation will be launched soon to free Tal Afar and other regions to complete the liberation of the whole province.

In late June, a top leader in the town declared during a a sermon of Friday prayer that the town has become a temporary headquarter for the Caliphate.

A source was quoted earlier this month as saying that non-Iraqi IS militants executed the last local leader in Tal Afar and the town is currently run by Arab and foreign members after eliminating all the Iraqi leaders.

Tal Afar is one of the important strongholds still held by IS in Nineveh since August 2014.