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IS executes 40 persons in Iraq

A British national has died in Iraq while apparently trying to defuse a bomb planted by Islamic State.

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Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes drove Islamic State out of the area at the end of past year.

United Nations refugee officials bracing for an exodus of hundreds of thousands of people from the Iraqi city of Mosul said on Tuesday they were struggling to find land for camps to house them.

The boy, Humadi added, was displaced from the Islamic State-held city of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, by recent military operations in the area.

Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes drove Islamic State out of Ramadi at the end of previous year.

In just the past few months alone, 213,000 people have been forced from their homes across the country, including around 48,000 who have fled Mosul, UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards tells reporters in Geneva.

Celebrating the victory on Twitter, one Iraqi wrote: “Soon they will enter Mosul, liberating our people from this global extremist organisation, but I’m afraid of what will happen after in Mosul”.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has pledged to drive IS out of the city this year.

“We will distribute this aid immediately after the liberation of the town”, he said. Nineveh is the province where Mosul is located and is home to a number of religious and ethnic groups including Christians, Turkmen and Kurds, in addition to Sunni Muslim Arabs.

Iraqi forces are now preparing for an assault on the terrorist group’s stronghold of Mosul, which is the largest Iraqi city still under the extremists’ control.

One refugee from the town of Qayara to the south of Mosul, which remains in IS hands, described to the Associated Press how fighters with the militant group were becoming increasingly nervous as they heard about defeats across the country.

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The Iraqi army is battling its way up the Tigris river and has 60 km (40 miles) left to reach the outskirts of Mosul, while Kurdish Peshmerga forces are deployed 30 km east of the city.

Foreign volunteers take aim at IS while they still can