Four IS militants killed in coalition strikes west of Anbar

Annah (IraqiNews.com) Four Islamic State militants died in airstrikes in western Anbar by the U.S.-led international military coalition on Tuesday, according to a local security source.

Aljournal News website quoted a security source at the army’s al-Jazeera Operations command in Anbar saying that the strike targeted an IS convoy in Wadi Hawran, a region north of the Islamic State stronghold town of Annah, west of the province.

Three militant transport vehicles and two others carrying weapon and fuel supplies were also destroyed in the strike before reaching Annah.

There has not been an officially-declared military campaign to free IS-held regions west of Anbar, but the province’s military command launched a brief assault early January that managed to recapture some western villages before stopping again.

Local officials believe Islamic State is holding thousands in those regions to use them as human shields against any future security offensive.

The Iraqi government is expected to aim at IS havens in Anbar once it is finished with eliminating the group from Mosul, its biggest bastion in Iraq where a security campaign, backed by the U.S.-led coalition and paramilitary troops, entered a fifgh month of operations to retake the city that fell in Islamic State’s grip in 2014.