Booby-traps … but no Baghdadi: the men cleaning up after Isis in northern Iraq
At the heart of the town that had sheltered him, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s presence still lurked in ransacked files and ruined buildings. It had been four days since the Islamic State fighters had fled Ba’aj, taking with them all they could as they headed for a last stand in the deserts of Syria. But despite […]Martin Chulov writes for The Guardian:
At the heart of the town that had sheltered him, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s presence still lurked in ransacked files and ruined buildings. It had been four days since the Islamic State fighters had fled Ba’aj, taking with them all they could as they headed for a last stand in the deserts of Syria. But despite their haste, the fleeing extremists left behind clues to how much this small, forsaken corner of north-western Iraq mattered to the world’s most dangerous terror group, and its fugitive leader.
Long held up as an icon of Isis’s strength, Ba’aj is now a symbol of its precipitous decline. Every village between the town and the Syrian border has been overrun in the past nine days by Shia militia forces allied to the Iraqi government, who are moving quickly to set up bases in the town.
