The Islamic State is executing civilians as they try to flee the city, including shooting people trying to swim across the Euphrates River to safety. Other routes out of Fallujah have been made too dangerous with the placement of defensive traps. Despite the dangers, approximately 18,000 people have fled to nearby camps in the past two weeks, the Norwegian Refugee Council. In another illustration of the Islamic State’s brutality, Iraqi forces discovered a mass grave containing approximately 400 bodies in Saqlawiya, northwest of Fallujah. The dead included members of the military and civilians, many of whom had been killed by being shot in the head.
Another series of bomb attacks hit targets in Baghdad, killing at least 24 people today.
Violence Between Rebels and Assad Regime Escalates in Aleppo
Clashes between rebels and Assad regime forces intensified in Aleppo over the weekend. At least 32 people were killed in a series of nearly 50 airstrikes targeting rebel-held neighborhoods of the city yesterday. Rebels responded by increasing the shelling of government neighborhoods, killing approximately 20 people, according to state media reports. The violence continues an escalation that began last week.
Assad regime forces are also pressing east, approaching the Islamic State-held Taqba Dam. The new offensive, occurring simultaneously with a push from U.S.-backed rebel forces from the west, is in effect creating a pincer movement trapping Islamic State forces in the Manbij pocket along the Turkey-Syria border.
“The roughly 30 Sunni villages surrounding Tuz Khurmatu are completely empty today. Where houses stood until just a few months ago, there are ruins today. Or, in the case of the village of Hweila, there is nothing left at all. It was bombed and flattened down to knee level, with just a bit of re-bar, some piles of rubble and bits of concrete pillars sticking out above the undulating grass. It is silent but for the sound of crickets and a few birds. Clumps of flowers reveal where yards once were. It is as though IS [the Islamic State] has set in motion a distinctly Iraqi machinery of barbarism, one which can also function just fine without the jihadist group. But the fact that the Hashd militias are now going after the Kurds in Tuz may have less to do with a carefully considered plan and more to do with internal rivalries within the groups. For roughly the last six months, the Iraqi state has been almost completely insolvent. The price of oil is too low to continue financing the state amid rampant corruption in the country. In Tuz Khurmatu, construction has stopped on a new hospital and school and the hollow structures stand empty. Even the Shiite militias, who had been able to pay substantial salaries until now, are no longer able to buy their fighters' loyalty with money alone. So they have been trying to outdo each other with brutality.”